Risk based decision-making approach for define the maintenance strategy of gas turbine blades

Nowadays several plants have aging problem. This type of problem occurs because the whole plant or some pieces of equipment are still in operation well beyond their design expected life, due e.g. to economical reason, regulatory constrain, or other issues. In this case a correct maintenance can prolong the plant life, maintaining the plant efficiency and the operational safety.Plant management can usually choose among different maintenance strategies, but identifying the best one is not an easy task. In fact different parameters affect the choice, as: the maintenance cost, the equipment condition before the maintenance, the plant stop cost, the safety of the operator during the maintenance and during the normal operation. In this paper the Integrated Dynamic Decision Analysis methodology is used to analyse and compare different solutions and provide the plant manager with a full picture of the possible unwanted events to support the decision making. This approach is applied to a practical case study related to the maintenance of gas turbine blades.