The Evolution of Marine Gas Turbine Controls

The background and evolution of gas turbine fuel controls is examined in this paper from a Naval perspective. The initial application of aeroderivative gas turbines to Navy ships utilized the engine’s existing aircraft fuel controls, which were coupled to the ship’s hydropneumatic machinery control system. These engines were adapted to Naval requirements by including engine specific functions. The evolution of Naval gas turbine controllers first to analog electronic, and more recently, to distributed digital controls, has increased the system complexity and added a number of levels of machinery protection. The design of a specific electronic control module is used to illustrate the current state of the technology. The paper concludes with a discussion of the further need to address the issues of fuel handling, metering and control in Navy ships with particular emphasis on integration in the marine environment.