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Gearbox of Wind Turbine

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Advanced Wind Turbine Technology

Abstract

A gearbox is often used in a wind turbine to increase the rotational speed from a low-speed main shaft to a high-speed shaft connecting with an electrical generator. Gears in wind turbine gearbox are subjected to severe cyclic loading due to variable wind loads that are stochastic in nature. Thus, the failure rate of gearbox system is reported to be relatively higher than the other wind turbine components. It is known in wind energy industry that improving reliability of gearbox designs is one of the key points to reduce wind turbine downtime and to make wind energy competitive as compared to fossil fuels. However, a wind turbine is a complex multi-physics system involving random wind loads, rotor blade aerodynamics, gear dynamics, electrical generator, and control systems. How to get an accurate prediction of the gearbox lifetime is a challenging issue. Furthermore, although some studies about wind turbine gear failure modes are carried out, limited studies have been carried out regarding design optimization including the reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) of the gear system considering wind load and manufacturing uncertainties.

In order to address the essential and challenging issue on design optimization of wind turbine gearbox under wind load and gear manufacturing uncertainties, three contributions have been made in this chapter: (1) development of an efficient numerical procedure for gear dynamics simulation of complex multibody gear system based on the multivariable tabular contact search algorithm to account for detailed gear tooth contact geometry with profile modifications or surface imperfections; (2) development of an integrated multibody dynamics computational framework for deterministic design optimization (DDO) and RBDO of the wind turbine gearbox using the gear dynamics simulation method developed in (1) and incorporating pitting gear tooth contact fatigue model, a dynamic wind load uncertainty model, and a wind turbine aerodynamic model using FAST; and (3) development of the DDO and RBDO of a wind turbine gearbox to minimize total weight while ensuring 20-year lifetime considering dynamic wind load and gear manufacturing uncertainties.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Huaxia Li

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  1. Huaxia Li
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Correspondence to Huaxia Li .

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  1. Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

    Weifei Hu

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Li, H. (2018). Gearbox of Wind Turbine. In: Hu, W. (eds) Advanced Wind Turbine Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78166-2_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78166-2_3

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