A planned NDE inspection of the turbine bearing housing and exhaust cylinder revealed cracks in 3 out of 12 Static Seal Segment plates, spanning multiple bolt holes. With the next outage opportunity months away, CAMS APM was alerted to monitor the condition closely while the customer continued operating the unit.
CAMS APM established automatic email alerts to notify the customer immediately of any changes in the condition. CAMS APM detected a drop in temperature in Disc Cavity #5, prompting the customer to complete an outage, during which 2 of the 3 cracked Static Seal segments were removed.
CAMS APM retrained its models to monitor the units until the next planned inspection window. During this inspection, the remaining cracked segment was found to have a self-arrested crack that had not worsened. Operational data showed no performance changes despite running with 2 removed static seals. The station opted to continue operations with a mitigation plan in place, using APM models for ongoing monitoring until the next outage.