Load analysis of special operation conditions and implementation of derived load states in Bearing Robustness Test (BRT)

Abstract

Abstract Premature bearing outages at the planetary and high speed shaft stage of gearboxes are responsible for long down time periods of wind turbines [1, 2]. In order to prevent premature bearing outages against certain failure mechanisms, a new robustness test procedure for original-sized WT gearbox bearings is developed within the project WT-Bearing Center.NRW. The BRT serves to qualify bearings for a damage-free operation over the entire service life [3]. It combines a fatigue load spectrum and also additional special load events [4]. This paper describes the analysis of wind turbine loads during different operation conditions and the definition of special load events, based on this analysis. The aim of including special loads to the BRT is to consider the complex real bearing loads within the test procedure as precisely as possible.