Methodology for the systematic design of conical plain bearings for use as main bearings in wind turbines

Abstract

With the possibility to replace sliding segments on the tower without disassembling the drivetrain, the use of segmented plain bearings with conical sliding surfaces as main bearing in wind turbines has a great potential to reduce the maintenance costs and thus the levelized cost of energy (LCOE). Furthermore, the short axial design leads to lower investment costs. Since this design is totally new and no design guidelines are available so far, the objective of this paper is to investigate the influence of the geometric parameters on the hydrodynamic pressure distribution of the bearing. In this context a parameter screening is performed using a suitable test field according to Plackett and Burman in order to determine the most relevant parameters. With the help of the simulations carried out after this test field, correlations between the geometric parameters and the hydrodynamic pressure distribution are evaluated. To be able to quantitatively analyze the three-dimensional pressure distribution, several key values are defined in this paper that describe the pressure distribution. The content of this paper is part of a methodology with the goal of developing a design guideline for conical plain bearings.