Stabilizing a gas turbine engine via incremental tuning

A system for automatically stabilizing combustor dynamics or emissions of a gas turbine by employing a tuning process, the system comprising:

• the gas turbine engine including one or more combustors that are each provided with a fuel flow split for governing a portion of a total fuel flow that is directed to each fuel nozzle of the combustor's fuel circuit;
• and
• an auto-tune controller for carrying out the tuning process comprising:
• (a) measuring one or more parameters from the gas turbine engine, wherein the one or more parameters represent at least one of pressure data or gas composition;
• (b) deriving amplitudes for the one or more measured parameters, respectively;
• (c) determining whether the amplitudes overcome predefined limits mapped to the one or more measured parameters;
• and
• (d) when the predefined limit is overcome, accessing a schedule to select an appropriate fuel flow split to alter.

One or more computer readable media that, when invoked by computer-executable instructions, perform a method for auto-tuning a gas turbine engine, the method comprising:

• monitoring one or more operating conditions of the gas turbine engine;
• determining whether the one or more operating conditions have overcome a threshold value;
• and
• when the threshold value is overcome, adjusting a fuel flow split by a predefined increment, wherein the fuel flow split governs a portion of a total fuel flow that is directed to each fuel nozzle of the combustor's fuel circuit.