The Ghost in the Gearbox: How White Etch Cracks Haunt the Wind Industry
Lubrication Explained
If you spend as much time on YouTube as I do, I am sure you have seen numerous videos of wind turbines catching fire, falling apart or otherwise failing. This guy gives us a good explanation of the root cause of these failures. The key point is that these bearings fail without any warning, no indication that there is anything wrong, and then boom! All of sudden the bearing fails and the whole thing disintegrates. The thing he doesn't talk about is just how big the loads are in wind turbine bearings and how much stress there is. I look at those things with those hundred foot long blades and I'm thinking that the loads on the bearings have got to be out of this world. So maybe we are actually going to learn something useful from this whole wind turbine / green-energy debacle.
4 comments:
Why isnt there a sensor on the bearing so that if operation exceeds selected parameters a brake is activated and via wifi a message is sent to maintenance?
I think the trick is that you would need a sensor and it seems they don't know what to sense, much less what the parameters would be. I mean how do you detect "White Itch"? You need some kind of black magic or what? I think this is what the guy is trying to figure out.
Voltage across the wearing surface. Voltage drop or increased resistence would register. Measured in fraction of miilivolt. Admittingly that sounds implausible.
Perhaps a strain indicator that registers in angstrooms.
Perhaps easiest is simply assigning a life limit as in the manner of aviation. Life limited parts.
Or, measure change in lubricating fluid. Pass the fluid through a spectometer. Surely a compact, low cost device could be made. We sent men to the moon, space craft beyond the heliosphere for cripes sake.
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