Objectives  The marine gas turbine is an important piece of marine power equipment, and its development is characterized by great difficulty, long cycle and high cost. Thus, the cost-effectiveness is a significant evaluation indicator. As such, it is significant to estimate the major life cycle cost of marine gas turbines based on their dominant technical indicators and parameters, as well as to further evaluate their full life-cycle economy during the early proposal stage.

  Methods  The technical indicators, physical parameters and cost data of typical marine power equipment are collected to build a development cost model and purchase price estimation model which are validated against existing data. At the same time, combined with the cost characteristics of the operation and maintenance stages, a main life cycle cost analysis framework and estimation model are established.

  Results  The development cost and purchase price models achieve high accuracy with an error less than 5%, while the estimation method for operation and maintenance is plausible and easy to apply to real work.

  Conclusions  Validation against the available data shows that these analytical framework and estimation models are applicable and feasible. This paper proposes effective approaches to support economic analysis in the marine gas turbine proposal stage.