The formation of the European Virtual Institute for Gas Turbine Instrumentation (EVI-GTI)

Expertise in the EU gas turbine instrumentation community is located across the gas turbine industry itself, within several specialist university departments often as part of a more general research programme in gas turbine research, and commercially available from numerous national and EU based international supply chain companies. As presently constituted this industry lacks focus, in particular when compared against the gas turbine instrumentation community in the USA. To change this an effective transnational network for the management of technology transfer, the rapid implementation of research results Into industrial applications and the 'best value' use of finite budgets has been created. Fifteen EU organisations, spanning OEMs, supply chain partners and universities in the field of gas turbine instrumentation have formed a virtual institute for achieving these goals. The formation of the European Virtual Institute for Gas Turbine Instrumentation (EVI-GTI), an initiative supported by the European Union's Competitive and Sustainable Growth (GROWTH) Programme, is described in this paper. The paper gives an outline of the work-plan for the formation of EVI-GTI, its mission and objectives, and the use of ICT tools. Furthermore, the different network management structures during and after the formative years are described. Finally, this paper addresses a number of generic problems experienced by other virtual institutes supported by the GROWTH programme and describes how these are addressed within EVI-GTI.