New solution to prevent excessive wear in wind turbine gears

Abstract

During wind turbines operation, yaw and pitch bearings suffer from sequential traction-compression stresses causing millions of micro movements per cycle between the gear teeth. This situation reduces the lubricant thickness between the teeth until metal contact appears causing excessive wear. The pitch gear lubrication at the zero degree position is carried out during unwind periods or programmed stops that cause important losses in electricity generation. Moreover, low efficiency of current lubrication systems generates the need of a preventive maintenance plan to avoid that the abrasive particles accelerate the premature failure due to wear. This study presents a novel lubrication system that takes advantage of the micro-tribology to continuously supplies fresh grease at the contact region. The system takes advantage of micro-technology to fabricate a micro-nozzle that is the base of a new generation of high efficiency automatic lubrication systems.