Reduced thermal stress turbine starting strategy

A fuel controller for a gas turbine engine comprising:

• a fuel control for providing metered fuel to the gas turbine engine in response to a fuel control signal;
• a rotational speed measuring device for determining a rotational speed of the gas turbine engine;
• a memory for storing control parameters used during start-up of the gas turbine engine;
• and
• a control responsive to a sensed speed and the control parameters stored in the memory for providing the fuel control signal to the fuel control for controlling the metering of fuel by the fuel controller applied to the gas turbine with a functional control relationship between a quantity of fuel which is metered by the fuel controller and the rotational speed of the gas turbine engine being varied during the start-up;
• and wherein
• control parameters utilized by the control in generating the control signal are varied from the stored control parameters during start-up to vary the functional control relationship, and low limit fuel values applied to the control from the memory, which are a function of a sensed initial rotational speed, are provided to the gas turbine engine from the fuel controller beginning with a stored low limit value for an initial rotational speed at which fuel is provided to the gas turbine engine, a calculated rotational acceleration for the turbine is provided by the control for the sensed initial rotational speed and compared with a threshold value stored in memory with an initial value of a correction term being applied to the control from the memory if the calculated acceleration is below the stored acceleration to which the calculated acceleration is compared to cause a change in the control signal to ensure metered fuel flow to the gas turbine engine.