Search Results (16)

The wind turbine gearbox, used as a multiplier, is one of the main components directly related to a wind turbine’s efficiency and lifespan. Therefore, strict control of the gearbox and its manufacturing processes and even minor improvements in this component strongly and positively impact energy production/generation over time. Since only some papers in the literature analyze the mechanical aspect of wind turbines, focusing on some parts in depth, this paper fills the gap by offering an analysis of the gearbox component under the highest amount of stress, namely relating to the sun shaft, as well as a more holistic analysis of the main gear drives, its components, and the lubrification system. Thus, this work diagnoses the fracture mechanics of a 1600 kW gearbox to identify the main reason for the fracture and how the chain of events took place, leading to catastrophic failure. The diagnoses involved numerical simulation (finite element analysis—FEA) and further analysis of the lubrication system, bearings, planetary stage gears, helical stage gears, and the high-speed shaft. In conclusion, although the numerical simulation showed high contact stresses on the sun shaft teeth, the region with the unexpectedly nucleated crack was the tip of the tooth. The most likely factors that led to premature failure were the missed lubrication for the planetary bearings, a lack of cleanliness in regard to the raw materials of the gears (voids found), and problems with the sun shaft heat treatment. With the sun gear’s shaft, planet bearings, and planet gears broken into pieces, those small and large pieces dropped into the oil, between the gears, and into the tooth ring, causing the premature and catastrophic gearbox failure. Full article

Sensory data are the basis for the intelligent health state awareness of planetary gearboxes, which are the critical components of electromechanical systems. Despite the advantages of intelligent diagnostic techniques for detecting intricate fault patterns and improving diagnostic speed, challenges still persist, which include the limited availability of fault data, the lack of labeling information and the discrepancies in features across different signals. Targeting this issue, a subdomain distribution adversarial adaptation diagnosis method (SDAA) is proposed for faults diagnosis of planetary gearboxes across different conditions. Firstly, nonstationary vibration signals are converted into a two-dimensional time–frequency representation to extract intrinsic information and avoid frequency overlapping. Secondly, an adversarial training mechanism is designed to evaluate subclass feature distribution differences between the source and target domain. A conditional distribution adaptation is employed to account for correlations among data from different subclasses. Finally, the proposed method is validated through experiments on planetary gearboxes, and the results demonstrate that SDAA can effectively diagnose faults under crossing conditions with an accuracy of 96.7% in diagnosing gear faults and 95.2% in diagnosing planet bearing faults. It outperforms other methods in both accuracy and model robustness. This confirms that this approach can refine domain-invariant information for transfer learning with less information loss from the sub-class level of fault data instead of the overall class level. Full article

This paper introduces an experimental approach to study the distribution of power losses in an oil jet-lubricated planetary gear set, with the aim of increasing the efficiency of these gearboxes. A thermal model is developed to estimate power losses associated with temperature distribution. This model is applied to analyze experimental data collected from a dedicated test setup. Different configurations are studied to progressively validate the thermal network. In this paper, only a configuration composed of a rotating ring gear and a fixed planet carrier is studied. This configuration enables the validation of a thermal network developed from a basic configuration where power loss sources are not numerous. The study reveals that, for this configuration, load-independent power losses are primarily attributed to hydrodynamic losses in the bearings, while the gear windage effects are of second order. The power losses are then compared to those generated by the same planetary gear set but using a rotating planet carrier. The comparison shows that the configuration composed of the rotating ring gear and fixed planet carrier produces less power loss than the other configuration. Full article

In recent years, the trend towards larger wind turbines and higher power densities has led to increasing demands on planet gear bearings. The use of sliding bearings instead of rolling bearings in planetary bearings makes it possible to increase the power density with lower component costs and higher reliability. Therefore, the use of planet gear sliding bearings in wind turbine gearboxes has become more common. However, the flexible structure and complex load conditions from the helical tooth meshes lead to highly complex elastic structure deformation that modifies the lubricant film thickness and pressure distribution and, thus, has to be considered in the calculation of the bearing’s load-carrying capacity. This paper introduces a highly time-efficient calculation procedure that is validated with pressure measurement data from a three-stage planetary gearbox for a multi-megawatt wind energy plant. The investigations focus on three main objectives: (i) analyses of experimental and predicted results for different load cases, (ii) validation of the results of planet gear sliding bearing code, and (iii) discussion on mandatory modeling depths for the different planet stages. Results indicate the necessity of further research in this field of applications, particularly for the third-stage bearings. Full article

Within planetary gear transmissions (PGTs), mode shapes and eigenfrequencies hold a crucial significance in operational reliability and efficacy. Mode shapes explain the unique motion patterns inherent in PGT systems. Conversely, eigenfrequencies describe the inherent frequencies at which PGT systems undergo vibration or oscillation upon exposure to external forces or disruptions. This research paper presents a comprehensive investigation into the dynamic behavior of a three-stage PGT utilized in medium and heavy trucks. This study introduces the Rayleigh energy method to assess system dynamics, revealing a bounded Rayleigh quotient related to the highest related eigenvalue. Then, this study delves into eigenfrequencies and the mode shape behavior of the adopted PGT model. The eigenfrequencies are identified as encompassing diverse vibrational modes of central components and planet gears. Moreover, a multi-scale analysis of the adopted PGT model is presented by deriving matrices for mass, bearing stiffness, and mesh stiffness. Comparisons with the Rayleigh energy method demonstrate the new approach’s efficiency, exhibiting a low margin of error in the determination of eigenfrequencies. This investigation also highlights the alignment of identified mode shapes with the established literature, detailing the multi-scale approach’s minor deviation in mode shape determination compared to the Rayleigh energy method. Full article

In the framework of the H2020 project IDERPLANE, aimed at providing innovative, effective, and validated criteria for the design and assessment of more reliable planet bearings for aerospace application analyzing the problem from a damage tolerance perspective, the present paper presents the numerical study and optimization of a test rig specifically designed for the experiments on the full-test article. Specifically, for the first time ever, an entire system including shafts, gears and bearings with all the rolling elements have been studied with a Finite Volume Computational Fluid Dynamics approach. This ambitious challenge was addressed with the implementation of a new mesh handling technique, namely the Global Remeshing Approach with Mesh Clustering (GRAMC). The aim was to optimize the lubrication of the test article to avoid unexpected failures during the experimental campaign. Three different oil jet directions have been studied and the most effective one, namely the axial one, was selected for the final test rig design. Full article

This article investigates the influence of planet mounting position on axle loads in double planet planetary gear trains. The study includes basic information about the type of geartrain used, theoretical data, finite element analysis simulations, and empirical experiments to provide more detailed data on the impact of planet pin position on bearing loads in different scenarios. A test model with six different setups is designed for the studies. Finite element simulations were then conducted to examine the model and to give more comprehensive information on the effect of pin location. Empirical experiments were conducted on a test rig to verify the theoretical and simulation results. The results indicate that the position of the planet pins has an impact on the distribution of load between the bearings of the outer and inner planets of the gear train. This study aims to provide more insights into the design and optimization of planetary gear trains when evaluating the loads on the bearings of the planet gears. Full article

A combined spiral bevel gear and planetary gear set was designed for bucket elevators to reduce the system’s complexity and improve the system’s efficiency. The dynamic model of a combined spiral bevel gear and a 2K-H planetary gear train was developed by using the lumped mass method, where the time-varying mesh stiffness and comprehensive mesh error were introduced. Then, the equations of motion of the system were solved with the Newmark numerical integration method, and the dynamic transmission error and mesh force of the gear pairs were obtained. The influences of different input rotational speeds and power on the dynamic response of the system were analyzed. The dynamic responses of the bearings between the bevel gears, planet carrier, and box were calculated. It was found that the dynamic mesh force gradually decreased with an increase in speed, and it increased with an increase in power. For low-speed and heavy-load transmission systems, the influence of power on the mesh force was more significant. It could also be found that the efficiency of the transmission system composed of a spiral bevel gear and a planetary gear was improved compared with that of the traditional system. Finally, the effectiveness of the dynamic model was validated through a comparison of the test signals. The results of the analysis in this study can be used to guide the design of vibration and noise reduction. Full article

The use of planetary gear stages intends to increase power density in drive trains of rotating machinery. Due to lightweight requirements on this type of machine elements, structures are comparably flexible while mechanical loads are high. This study investigates the impact of structure deformation on sliding planet gear bearings applied in the planetary stages of wind turbine gearboxes with helical gears. It focuses on three main objectives: (i) development of a procedure for the time-efficient thermo-elasto-hydrodynamic (TEHD) analysis of sliding planet gear bearing; (ii) understanding of the specific deformation characteristics of this application; (iii) investigation of the planet gear bearing’s modified operating behavior, caused by the deformation of the sliding surfaces. Generally, results indicate an improvement of predicted operating conditions by consideration of structure deformation in the bearing analysis for this application. Peak load in the bearing decreases because the loaded proportion of the sliding surface increases. Moreover, tendencies of single design measures, determined for rigid geometries, keep valid but exhibit significantly different magnitudes under consideration of structure deformation. Results show that consideration of structure flexibility is essential for sliding planet gear bearing analysis if quantitative assertions on load distributions, wear phenomena, and interaction of the bearing with other components are required. Full article

The application of sliding planet gear bearings in wind turbine gearboxes has become more common in recent years. Assuming practically applied helix angles, the gear mesh of the planet stage causes high force and moment loads for these bearings involving high local loads at the bearing edges. Specific operating behavior and suitable design measures to cope with these challenging conditions are studied in detail based on a thermo-hydrodynamic (THD) bearing model. Radial clearance and axial crowning are identified as important design parameters to reduce maximum pressures occurring at the bearing edges. Furthermore, results indicate that a distinct analysis of the gear mesh load distribution is required to characterize bearing operating behavior at part-load. Here, operating conditions as critical as the ones reached at nominal load might occur. Wear phenomena can improve the shape of the gap in the circumferential as well as in axial direction incorporating a significant reduction of local maximum pressures. The complexity of the combination of these aspects and the additionally expected impact of structure deformation gives an insight into the challenges in the design processes of sliding planet gear bearings for wind turbine gearbox applications. Full article

Planetary gearbox systems are critical mechanical components in heavy machinery such as wind turbines. They may suffer from various failure modes, due to the harsh working environment. Dynamic modeling is a useful method to support early fault detection for enhancing reliability and reducing maintenance costs. However, reported studies have not considered the sun gear tooth crack and bearing clearance simultaneously to analyze their combined effect on vibration characteristics of planetary gearboxes. In this paper, a dynamic model is developed for planetary gearboxes considering the clearance of planet gear, sun gear, and carrier bearings, as well as sun gear tooth crack levels. Bearing forces are calculated considering bearing clearance, and the dynamic model equations are updated accordingly. The results reveal that the combination of bearing clearances can affect the vibration response with sun gear tooth crack by increasing the kurtosis. It is found that the effect of planet gear bearing clearance is very small, while the sun gear and carrier bearing clearance has clear impact on the vibration responses. These findings suggest that the incorporation of bearing clearance is important for planetary gearbox dynamic modeling. Full article

The quasi-static load sharing characteristics of a planetary gear set with planet journal bearings are numerically investigated. The application of journal bearings instead of rolling bearings in planetary gear sets is an alternative to increase the rotation speed. Therefore, an effective analysis method is needed to estimate the dynamic performance of a planetary gear set with planet journal bearings. Here, an available load sharing factor computation method is developed considering the effect of the variable journal bearing stiffness. Results of an experiment are used to validate the effectiveness of the computation method. Furthermore, the load sharing characteristics of a planetary gear set with planet journal bearings are influenced by bearing parameters and operating conditions significantly due to the changing bearing stiffness of journal bearings. The effects on the load sharing factor and the bearing stiffness are studied in detail simultaneously based on the proposed analysis method. The load sharing factor of a planetary gear set with planet journal bearings has a similar variation with the bearing support stiffness under the same load. These researches provide a theoretical basis for the application of journal bearings in planetary gear sets. Full article

In the presence of manufacturing errors, the dynamic properties of herringbone planetary gear train (HPGT) can be altered from the originally designed properties to have undesired behavior. In this paper, by considering the herringbone gear actual structure characteristics, manufacturing eccentric errors of members (i.e., carrier and gears) and tooth profile errors of gears, time-varying meshing stiffness, bearing deformation, and gyroscopic effect, a novel lateral–torsional–axial coupling dynamic model for the herringbone planetary gear system is formulated by using the lumped-parameter method, which is able to be employed in the dynamic feature analysis of the HPGT with an arbitrary number of planets and different types of manufacturing errors. By applying the variable-step Runge–Kutta algorithm, the dynamic response of a HPGT system is studied for cases with and without planet–gear eccentric error excitations. The dynamic contact forces of gears and bearings are analyzed for the two cases in time and frequency domains, respectively. Moreover, the effect of the planet–gear eccentricity on the vibration accelerations of the HPGT system is also discussed. The obtained results indicate that manufacturing error excitations such as the planet–gear eccentricity have a pronounced influence on the dynamic behavior of the HPGT system. Full article

In order to study the force and life of the key components in the gearbox of an existing double-rotor wind turbine, the design and structural parameters of the gearbox in the traditional National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) 5 MW single-rotor wind turbine are adopted, and the fixed ring gear of the first planetary stage transmission is released to form a differential gearbox suitable for a double-rotor wind turbine with two inputs. The double input is used to connect the double rotor. Subsequently, the characteristics of the gearbox in a double-rotor wind turbine are discussed. On the basis of the constant rated power of the whole wind turbine, the total power is divided into two parts, which are allocated to the double rotors, then two rotational speeds of the two inputs are given according to different power ratios by complying with the matching principle of force and moment. Furthermore, the force acting on the pitch circle of the planet gear, as well as the force and life of the planet bearing of the two-stage planetary transmission are calculated and compared with a single-rotor wind turbine. The results show that the structural advantages of a double-rotor wind turbine can reduce the stress of key components of the gearbox and increase the life span of the planet bearing, thereby the life of the whole gearbox is improved and the downtime of the whole wind turbine is reduced. Full article

The planetary gearbox is at the heart of most rotating machinery. The premature failure and subsequent downtime of a planetary gearbox not only seriously affects the reliability and safety of the entire rotating machinery but also results in severe accidents and economic losses in industrial applications. It is an important and challenging task to accurately detect failures in a planetary gearbox at an early stage to ensure the safety and reliability of the mechanical transmission system. In this paper, a novel method based on wavelet packet energy (WPE) and modulation signal bispectrum (MSB) analysis is proposed for planetary gearbox early fault diagnostics. First, the vibration signal is decomposed into different time-frequency subspaces using wavelet packet decomposition (WPD). The WPE is calculated in each time-frequency subspace. Secondly, the relatively high energy vectors are selected from a WPE matrix to obtain a reconstructed signal. The reconstructed signal is then subjected to MSB analysis to obtain the fault characteristic frequency for fault diagnosis of the planetary gearbox. The validity of the proposed method is carried out through analyzing the vibration signals of the test planetary gearbox in two fault cases. One fault is a chipped sun gear tooth and the other is an inner-race fault in the planet gear bearing. The results show that the proposed method is feasible and effective for early fault diagnosis in planetary gearboxes. Full article