Automation System for Testing Air Turbine Starters for Naval Gas Turbines

The paper presents the automation system developed for the testing bench of air turbine starters. The starters were designed and developed for starting-up Pratt & Whitney ST40M gas turbines installed on-board of the Romanian frigates. During the naval retrofitting works conducted by the Romanian Research and Development Institute for Gas Turbines COMOTI, the former cruise engines were replaced with P&W ST40M gas turbines, which require lightweight, compact and reliable starters. A total of eight air turbine starters were designed, developed and tested, four installed on the four ST40M gas turbines on both frigates power transmission lines and four as spare ones. To ensure a flawless, reliable operation of the starters on gas turbines, the test bench has to include the necessary equipment and instrumentation integrated in the automation system. An electric generator was considered to act as a brake and simulate the load of the gas turbine. The starter needs between 25–45 seconds to start-up the gas turbine on-board. The main parameters that were observed during the bench tests are: starter speed, motor speed and power, vibration levels, air and oil pressure, and temperature. Thermographic scanning was also conducted, observing the temperature decrease at starter's turbine in its operation modes.