Fuzzy logic supervisory control for steam turbine prewarming automation

The process of warming a large steam turbine after an extended period of maintenance or inactivity is called "prewarming". Currently, many large steam turbines are prewarmed manually in an otherwise completely automated startup procedure. An approach is outlined for automating the prewarming of large steam turbines using fuzzy logic. In this approach, heuristics employed by a human operator during prewarming are captured in a fuzzy rule base and used by a supervisory controller.<<ETX>>