Pythia, a tool developed at Cranfield University, concentrates on the achievement of optimal gas turbine performance and cost management. It encompasses the following capabilities:

• Gas Turbine Performance Simulation.
• Gas Turbine Performance Degradation Analysis.
• Instrumentation Analysis, Data Correction and Validation.
• Gas Turbine Performance Model Adaptation.
• Gas Turbine Gas Path Diagnostics.
• Gas Turbine Prognostics and Asset Management.

Given the growing demand of the industry for a tool capable of predicting the gas turbine performance, Pythia is being enhanced, by introducing novel features, to gain Prognostics and Asset Management competence.The accumulated historic information relating to a particular engine can now be used to produce a statistics-based prediction of the likely evolution of the deterioration phenomenon.
Some component incipient faults can develop and cause a dramatic degradation in engine performance. As long as a fault is not abrupt, the module is able to identify occurrence of the phenomenon and produce a prediction of the likely evolution.
The module can also provide both short term and long term forecasts that can be tailored for particular applications and business objectives. Statistics-based levels of confidence are attached to all predictions, allowing quick analysis of various engineering and business scenarios. Pythia can now be regarded as an effective tool to interpret an engine deterioration database for prognosis purposes.
Cranfield University has become internationally recognised for its development of advanced performance models and asset management technologies for gas turbines, says Dr Yiguang Li, of Cranfield University’s Gas Turbine Engineering Group.
“These tools now allow interplay between engine performance simulation, gas path diagnostics and instrumentation analysis to offer insight into operability, trend analysis and prognostics. All these capabilities are now embedded in Pythia, a modular toolset that can be configured to suit individual customer requirements in the oil and gas sector.”
Given the maturity of the gas turbine industry, and the quality of the equipment, the field experience of these machines has been broadly very good.

Cranfield University, Gas Turbine Engineering Group, Cranfield, Bedfordshire. www.cranfield.ac.uk