Report on Drivetrain Design, Testing and O&M Read this interesting report and learn from case studies on how manufacturers develop R&D for drivetrain design & testing as well as how they deal with Operation & Maintenance challenges. Read it for free here: http://bit.ly/report_Slideshare

1. www.wind-drivetrain.com
Drivetrain - Design, Testing and O&M
Part 1: Drivetrain Design & Testing
Advanced R&D for better Wind Turbine Drive Train Design

2. Advanced R&D for Better Wind Turbine Drivetrain Design
Drivetrain Design
As wind turbine engineers work on designs to scale-up to 15 MW machines, wind turbine drivetrain de-
signs become increasingly more complex. And with ever-larger capital investments required to meet the
engineering challenge, the stakes are higher than ever. As such, advanced research and development
facilities are playing an increasingly significant role in the design and testing of massive wind turbine
designs in order to ensure the highest returns possible.
Stepping Back to View Turbines Holistically with a Systems-Level Approach
Though a drivetrain consists of many small subcomponents made by different OEMs, when it comes to
sophisticated and complex systems such as the drivetrains for a wind turbine, rather than focusing on
the performance of individual components, an approach that helps to diminish the CoE is that of sys-
tem-level engineering to examine how all of the various components work together. As a result, more
and more, wind turbine designers are taking a step away from the minutia of individual component de-
signs in favour of a more whole-systems approach.
In particular, engineers are finding that system level engineering is required to decrease the overall cost
of drive trains and improve reliability. A system level approach can mean many things, but when it comes
to drivetrain design it can include how the drive train concept is developed, how the drivetrain inte-
grates with the rest of the system, testing the drivetrain in the field and over longer periods of time, and
much more. Throughout the testing, the engineers look for areas of potential failure, realistic drivetrain
performance in the field, reliability data from field tests, and so forth.
Completing more thorough drivetrain testing not only improves overall turbine reliability, it can signifi-
cantly lower the long-term CoE. Given that drive train integration is playing a larger role in driving down
OPEX costs, this kind of systems thinking is increasingly more valuable. Though it requires a larger up-
front investment in design for whole-system testing and analysis, in the end, the investment invariably
proves wise as it results in a turbine that performs more consistently at higher efficiencies and with fewer
failures.
Already at last year’s 4th International Drivetrain Conference, the experts on site were
discussing how to improves overall turbine reliability by more throughout testing and
overal drivetrain design...
www.wind-drivetrain.com