TY - JOUR

T1 - Wear in wind turbine pitch bearings—A comparative design study

AU - Schwack, Fabian

AU - Halmos, Fabian

AU - Stammler, Matthias

AU - Poll, Gerhard

AU - Glavatskih, Sergei

N1 - Funding Information: The authors would like to thank the German Federal Ministry for Economy Affairs an Energy (BMWi) for funding the project Highly Accelerated Pitch Bearing Test (HAPT - Project number 0325918) from which this paper originated. They would like to thank Enercon for supplying the wind speed measurement data. Furthermore, the authors would like to thank Felix Prigge for supporting the presented research and the design of the bearing images.

PY - 2022/3/28

Y1 - 2022/3/28

N2 - We tested two types of ball bearings with an outer diameter of 750 mm to learn more about the challenges of oscillating motions for pitch bearings. The experimental conditions are derived from aero-elastic simulations, long-term wind speed measurements and a scaling method that considers loads and pitch angles. As a result, the parameters relevant for pitch bearings are represented appropriately, and the findings are transferable to other bearing sizes. For the tested parameter sets, severe wear occurred for over 90% of the exposed contact areas after 12 500 oscillating cycles. Decreasing the number of cycles to 1250 leads to a mix of exposed areas with 13% severe wear, 32% mild wear and 55% no wear, with no apparent pattern. The results demonstrate that a comparatively small amount of consecutive cycles can lead to severe wear. A new type of bearing tested showed less wear for the selected operating conditions.

AB - We tested two types of ball bearings with an outer diameter of 750 mm to learn more about the challenges of oscillating motions for pitch bearings. The experimental conditions are derived from aero-elastic simulations, long-term wind speed measurements and a scaling method that considers loads and pitch angles. As a result, the parameters relevant for pitch bearings are represented appropriately, and the findings are transferable to other bearing sizes. For the tested parameter sets, severe wear occurred for over 90% of the exposed contact areas after 12 500 oscillating cycles. Decreasing the number of cycles to 1250 leads to a mix of exposed areas with 13% severe wear, 32% mild wear and 55% no wear, with no apparent pattern. The results demonstrate that a comparatively small amount of consecutive cycles can lead to severe wear. A new type of bearing tested showed less wear for the selected operating conditions.

KW - bearing design

KW - blade bearing

KW - downscaled experiments

KW - individual pitch control

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85118897042&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1002/we.2693

DO - 10.1002/we.2693

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85118897042

VL - 25

SP - 700

EP - 718

JO - WIND ENERGY

JF - WIND ENERGY

SN - 1095-4244

IS - 4

ER -