During the operation of wind turbines with gearbox of traditional configuration, consisting of one planetary stage and two helical stages high failure rate of high speed shaft bearings is observed. Such a high failures frequency is not reflected in the results of standard calculations of bearing durability. Most probably it can be attributed to atypical failure mechanism. The authors studied problems in 1.5 MW wind turbines of...

A system of two taper roller bearings can carry loads with a high ratio of axial load to radial load. Such a system was proposed for a wind turbine gearbox following the poor durability of original bearing design with the aim of increasing durability. Because of size limits, a proposed system is composed of two different taper roller bearings. Standard manufacturers’ catalogues do not provide information on recommended preload...

The use of preloaded tapered roller bearings in wind turbine drive systems allows a transfer of load in the case of high variations of axial forces. The examined bearing system, a modification of a current design, consists of a pair of different sized bearings. Previous study showed the high sensitivity of tapered roller bearings on the existing radial interference. Dimensional tolerances used in the original design do not allow...