An engineering approach for the estimation of slewing bearing stiffness in Wind Turbine Generators
Wind Energy 22(3) : 376-391 (2019)
Laburpena
The stiffness of yaw and pitch slewing bearings has a critical influence on the structural
behaviour of Wind Turbine Generators. Thus, it is commonly required by designers for
their simulations to estimate deformations and select the most suitable bearing for their
working conditions in preliminary design stages. In this work, a Design of Experiments was
carried out via Finite Element Analysis to obtain the stiffness curves of all of the standard
four-point contact slewing bearings from the catalogues of manufacturers under radial,
axial and tilting loads. From these results, a set of simple formulas to calculate the ring
deformations were adjusted. Combining them with contact deformation results obtained in
previous work by the authors, a complete and efficient tool for slewing bearing stiffness
estimation has been developed.