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THE TIMKEN COMPANY
internal geometry to operate effectively in
high misalignment conditions. In addition,
cylindrical roller bearings (CRB) work well
with TRBs, providing additional radial
capacity and stiffness that allows for a more
power-dense arrangement. These and other
advantages of TRB and CRB arrangements
make them a better solution for multi-
megawatt turbines.
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THE TIMKEN COMPANY
DIRECT/HYBRID DRIVE each row and prevent bearing lubrication
CONSIDERATIONS starvation due to flow blockages.
Fig. 4 shows loads in a coordinate axis
imposed by the rotor blades on a typical Whether to supply a bearing with a full
wind turbine. complement of rollers or to include a cage or
separator is another critical design decision.
Full complement designs will use more
rollers in the same design space, thus will
have increased load carrying capacity. Rollers
will contact each other at the roller body, so
appropriate surface treatment may be
necessary to avoid surface damage during
use. For full complement designs, surface
treatments can be incorporated to provide
surface hardness improvements and ultra-
low surface finishes allowing improved
lubricant film thickness generation at
relatively low speeds. The type and method
of lubrication will also influence the decisions
on applying a full complement bearing.
Fig 4. Loads and working system of Incorporating a cage on ultra-large bearings
axis. may provide benefit in roller guidance,
lubricant distribution and elimination of roller
Some challenges faced by direct drive body contact.
turbine manufacturers and bearing suppliers
in managing the loads and stresses in a Direct drive main shaft bearings also need to
compact space. Stress internal to the bearing have properly designed features that allow
is a function of the weight of the hub/blade for efficient handling and installation. The
and rotor assembly, along with external size of the bearings can create logistical
loading during operation. Therefore, for any challenges and bearings need to be installed
type of wind turbine architecture, it is critical properly to avoid issues that can cause long-
that wind turbine manufacturers provide an term performance problems. Some bearings
accurate assessment of field loading to the are designed to have bolt-on features for
bearing manufacturer. Inadequate inputs attachment to the nacelle structure, hub and
into bearing life models may result in rotor assemblies. Without an external shaft
improper bearing life analysis and potentially or a press fit into the housing, bolt designs
lead to premature bearing damage. are critical to maintain bearing clamp, and in
some cases, alignment of bearing races.
Lubrication of critical race/roller surfaces is
another issue requiring special design Bearing setting is another critical aspect for
consideration. Most bearings in the direct proper performance. In a tapered non-
drive mainshaft market are grease lubricated. adjustable (TNA) design, bearing suppliers
Care needs to be taken to select the proper can carefully control the designed setting. In
grease that will not migrate away from fact, the only factor outside the bearing
roller/race surfaces and lead to seal leakage. supplier’s control that can impact the
This may need to be balanced with the ability operating setting is external clamp load.
of lubrication control systems to work with
the specified grease. These systems should For a turbine mainshaft application with two
be designed to ensure proper lubrication of separate rows, setting is the responsibility of
the turbine assembler. Several methods for
achieving a desired final setting may be
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THE TIMKEN COMPANY
employed, but bearing size needs to be
considered for several reasons, including 800
-200
BEARING FATIGUE DUTY CYCLE Fig. 5. Five second snapshot of data from
The bearing fatigue duty cycle received from design program.
the customer can have a significant influence
In order to develop a duty cycle from time
on the size and geometry of the mainshaft
series data for these load conditions, two
bearing designs. A concern is that adding
methods can be utilized to generate duty
conservatism by oversimplification of the
cycles – an independent or dependent
duty cycle will result in a negative cost
reduction. In an independent reduction, each
structure. Some manufacturers use
load is binned separately for a specific RPM
hundreds of conditions in the duty cycle.
bin. A load histogram can then be generated
Others may use tens or only a single
for each load using the previously discussed
condition in the duty cycle.
technique. An equivalent load for each
resulting load histogram can then be
Duty cycles usually are generated using
calculated. Finally, a duty cycle can be
design programs to model the wind turbine
constructed with the corresponding
system, typically with an output at 20-Hz.
combinations of independent equivalent
The high frequency of data provides a vast
loads.
number of snap shots of the system, even for
short time intervals. All this data must be
While an independent duty cycle is simpler to
sorted and binned in useful categories, using
create it may not always maintain the proper
the arithmetic average bin value, for fatigue
relationship between specific load
analysis. A five second excerpt of data from
combinations. This type of load case may
the graph has been added in to show the
result in an over-predicted bearing life due to
variation of the data. Variation in this short
lost load/moment relationships. This is
time is graphically shown in Fig. 5. The
where a dependent duty cycle reduction can
complete data is then sorted into bins and
be beneficial. In a dependent reduction,
the time durations in each bin is summed to
loads are binned dependently based on
determine the percent of time each condition
importance of effect to bearing life, where
contributes to the duty cycle.
low importance loads can generally be
equated to as few or as little as one
equivalent load. Bin size should be
determined methodically for the speed and
loads by understanding the effect on the
bearing system. The following
recommended order of importance of the
data for proper bearing analysis can be
utilized in either reduction case:
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THE TIMKEN COMPANY
1. RPM (due to effects on the development bearing sizing but would not model actual
of the lubrication film thickness). operating conditions and many assumptions
2. Pitch Moment, My made for catalog calculations do not hold
3. Yaw Moment, Mz true in real world operation.
4. Radial Load, Fz
5. Axial Load, Fx Bearing companies have developed in-house
6. Radial Load, Fy analytical programs to better evaluate the
environmental effects influencing bearing
Once the low priority load bins have been life. It is suggested that wind turbine
defined, higher importance load data can manufacturers contact their approved
then be binned in subset histograms of bearing suppliers for advanced bearing life
appropriate size for each lower importance analysis. There are several life adjustment
load bin. A duty cycle can be constructed factors included in advanced bearing analysis
from the dependent relationships and in Syber, a proprietary finite element based
analyzed with an advanced bearing fatigue computer simulation software of the author's
calculation program with Miner’s Rule to company. In addition to load and speed,
determine the bearing L10a fatigue life. Fig. 6 other major life influencers are:
below illustrates a generic relationship
structure based on the author’s 1. Load zone (bearing fits and setting)
recommended importance of reduction. 2. Thermal effects (operating
temperatures, thermal gradients, lube
Typically, bearing manufacturers are sump temperatures)
provided the binned duty cycle from wind 3. Lubrication effects
turbine OEMs and/or gearbox manufacturers. 4. Misalignment/race stress (functions of
Equally important as the correct time series housing and shaft stiffnesses – radial,
data is the method of the reduction. While axial, and tilting)
each manufacturer can have its own method 5. Fatigue propagation rate
for the reduction of time series data, it is also 6. Bearing geometry factors
important that they understand the
significance of the reduction methods on the BEARING LOAD ZONE
load/moment relationship on predicted Load zone is an angular measurement of the
bearing life. load distribution in a bearing and is a direct
indication of how many rollers per row share
Fy the applied load. There are a vast list of
Fx
factors that determine what the operating
load zone is, including initial lateral setting,
Fz,1 Fz,2 Fz,3 applied load, operating temperature,
structural properties of the shaft/housing and
…
400
350
Low Load
300
250
200
Medium Load
150
100
High Load
50
0
-0.300 -0.250 -0.200 -0.150 -0.100 -0.050 0.000
Setting (mm)
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THE TIMKEN COMPANY
THERMAL EFFECTS
Temperature can impact bearing life in
multiple ways, all of which must be taken
into account when trying to perform
advanced life calculations. Areas in which
thermal gradients can impact are listed
below:
Lubricant viscosity
Operating setting
Fig. 13. Two TS wide spread mainshaft.
Bearing arrangement
Dissimilar material thermal expansion
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THE TIMKEN COMPANY
Synthetic base oil with high viscosity
index (VI) will provide better lubrication Basic stress profiles are shown below in Fig.
over a larger temperature range 16. Stresses are higher near the center due
Excellent water, rust, oxidation, and to race and roller crowning. Relatively high
corrosion resistance is important for loading can cause load truncation at the ends
extended grease life of the contact area and misalignment can
Low-temperature operation with adequate cause stress imbalance along the raceway.
pumping may be required in some The final graph shows typical stress plots for
applications edge stress conditions.
RELIABILITY REQUIREMENTS
There have been many bearing life
expectations from various customers. Some
have used 150,000 hours, while others have
used 175,000 or even 200,000 hours life
calculation for which 90 percent of the
Fig 15. Misalignment.
population will reliably survive (e.g. L10).
Bearing life can be negatively affected by The required calculated L10 for a 20-year
excessive shaft and housing misalignment. design life would improve with increasing
High loads and overturning moments can reliability requirements. As seen in Table 2,
cause this to happen. Misalignment will taken from ISO281:2007, in order to obtain
increase edge stresses in roller bearings and the required reliability of 150,000 hours at a
could cause early damage in the bearing in higher reliability level, the calculated L10 will
the form of geometric stress concentration increase. Also shown in Table 1 are the
(GSC) spalling. TRBs and CRBs can be required L10 for a 30-year design. Another
designed with special profiles to alleviate way to state this would be that the reliability
edge stresses under given conditions. This is factor, a1, is multiplied by the L10 to attain the
another reason for the importance of an Ln life of 175,000 or 263,000 hours for the 20-
accurate assessment of wind turbine loading. or 30-year calculated life, respectively.
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THE TIMKEN COMPANY
using a housing or shaft to transfer the
Life Reliabilit a1 20-year 30-year load.
y L10 Life L10 Life Brinelling and false brinelling:
L10 90 1 175,000 263,000 Brinelling results from permanent
L5 95 0.64 274,000 411,000 deformation or yielding in the part. False
L3 97 0.47 376,000 564,000 brinelling is commonly seen when the
L2 98 0.37 478,000 717,000 rollers are not rotating and oscillate back
L1 99 0.25 706,000 1,060,00 and forth along the direction of the
0 rotational axis of the roller.
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THE TIMKEN COMPANY
Included roller angle (F)
Mean roller diameter [(LED+SED)/2]
There are many design considerations A traditional closing in process may not be
required for two-row TRB for mainshaft feasible in this size range. This can be
applications. Designs should be balanced in overcome with a means of axial retention to
order to obtain a bearing that is optimized for hold the rollers in place after assembly. The
performance, price and manufacturing. The inner race assembly can then be handled
primary features (Fig. 19) of the bearing that separately from the outer race without a need
must be considered in the design phase are: of unitization. Another option is a cut-and-
Mean pitch diameter (average of the weld cage design that avoids the closing in
bore and outside diameter of the process.
bearing)
Included cup angle (E) As mentioned previously, use of a cage will
lower the bearing rating when compared to
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THE TIMKEN COMPANY
an identically sized full-complement design, Contacting lip polymer seals are likely to
but there could be other advantages related control leakage better than non-contacting
to better grease distribution including labyrinth seals, but care must be taken in
elimination of contact between roller bodies designing the seal for ability to meet life
(rollers will contact cage which is made of expectations for wind turbines in the field.
softer material and generally will not wear Non-contacting labyrinth seals, when
roller surface) and roller guidance through designed and applied properly, should give
unloaded zones. more confidence in meeting long-life targets.
Concerns that must be addressed for
For full-complement designs, there are labyrinth seals are control of lubricant
several considerations that must be taken leakage and robustness to system deflections
into account during the design process, to avoid labyrinth element contact.
including:
A two-row TRB bearing supplied with a
Maximum allowable speed is limited to preset lateral setting, seals and lubrication
prevent metal transfer from roller to takes complexity out of the turbine
roller/race. manufacturer’s assembly process and allows
Engineered coatings on rollers will allow the bearing manufacturer to maintain tight
for increases in speed and will enhance control of the characteristics that factor into
bearing performance by altering the final bearing assembly.
surface finish and improving the lambda
ratios. The bearing life should be CONCLUSION
improved, particularly in low lambda There is a strong drive in the industry to
conditions, by reducing adhesive metal improve wind turbine reliability. Proper
transfer. bearing design and application are key
Unitization will simplify bearing setting, factors in helping to increase turbine uptime
installation and removal, and may help and reducing maintenance costs. Accurately
eliminate incidental damage to rollers defining system loading and environmental
during turbine assembly. conditions and translating them for use into
advanced analytical programs is a key first
The use of CRB/SRB designs in mainshaft step to achieving improvements.
configurations, especially hybrids which may
have a very large outside diameter (OD) size, For mainshaft designs in mid-speed hybrids
is related to roller size. Large rollers or direct drive turbines, TRBs provide
operating in a system with excessive features that address concerns relating to
clearance may be more prone to bearing life/capacity, stress and roller load
skidding/smearing damage compared to a management, reduction of skidding and
preloaded TRB. smearing, improving system stiffness and
simplifying the turbine assembly process.
The authors’ company has significant
SEALS experience in advanced analysis to help
Sealing is more critical in direct drive achieve the desired improvements.
generator wind turbines than hybrid and
other drivetrain designs. The seals need to Involving bearing suppliers in the design
control grease/oil leakage and also exclude process can lead to better use of available
contaminants from entering the bearing. package space for the bearings and allow for
Direct drive generators can be damaged if a more optimized turbine design.
lubricants leak from the bearing seals into the
generator. Seals are also critical in off-shore ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
applications where exposure to salt water The authors would like to extend sincere
spray causes a harsh operating environment. appreciation to several individuals who
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THE TIMKEN COMPANY
helped formulate the ideas discussed in this
paper, including Timken associates Jim
Charmley, Gerald Fox, Michael Kotzalas,
Doug Lucas and David Novak.
REFERENCES
1) Butterfield, S., McNiff, B., and Musial, W.,
Improving Wind Turbine Gearbox Reliability,
European Wind Energy Conference, May 2007
2) Dinner, H., Trends in Wind Turbine Drive
Trains, KISSsoft GmbH, Switzerland
3) Lucas, D., and Pontius, T., Designing Large
Diameter Close-Coupled Two-Row Tapered
Roller Bearings for Supporting Wind Turbine
Rotor Loading, Hannover Fair, 2003
4) Bhatia, R., and Springer, T., Using Histograms
in the Selection Process for Tapered Roller
Bearings, International Off-Highway Meeting,
Milwaukee, 1981
5) Ionescu, L., and Pontius, T., Mainshaft Support
for Wind Turbine with Fixed and Floating
Bearing Configuration: Tapered Double Inner
Row Bearing vs. Spherical Roller Bearing on
Fixed Position, 2005
6) Oyague, F. Gearbox Modeling and Load
Simulation of a Baseline 750-kW Wind Turbine
Using State-of-the-Art Simulation Codes,
NREL/TP-500-41160, Feb. 2009
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THE TIMKEN COMPANY
Bearings • Steel •
Precision Components • Lubrication •