How much do you know about wind turbine bearing?

In recent years, wind power in emerging markets around the world has developed rapidly. Against the backdrop of national policy support and tight energy supply, China's wind power equipment manufacturing industry has risen rapidly, and the market demand for wind power equipment has grown rapidly, which has also driven the development of wind turbine bearings.
Bearings are the core components of wind turbines. Wind turbine bearings range from bearings used in blades, main shafts and yaws to high speed bearings used in gearboxes and generators
Main features of wind turbine bearings
1. Bad use environment.
2. High maintenance cost.
3. High requirement of service life.
Bearings for wind turbines mainly include yaw bearings, pitch bearings, spindle bearings, gearbox bearings, and generator bearings.
Generator bearing
Bearing type: deep groove ball bearings, angular contact bearings.
Working conditions: high speed (1000-1500rpm), high temperature (90-120 °C) heavy load.
Grease requirements: excellent shear stability, good oxidation stability, good wear resistance, excellent low temperature start-up performance.
Spindle bearing
Bearing type: tapered roller bearing, spherical bearing.
Working conditions: low speed (<25rpm), wide temperature range, heavy load, vibration, high humidity.
Grease requirements: excellent wear resistance, good oxidation stability, excellent low temperature start-up performance, good water resistance and so on.
Pitch/yaw bearing
Bearing type: four point contact ball bearing
Working conditions: wide temperature range, heavy load, vibration, high humidity.
Grease requirements: excellent corrosion resistance and wear resistance, excellent low temperature start-up performance, good water resistance, good oxidation stability, etc.
Each wind turbine equipment has 1 set of yaw bearing and 3 sets of pitch bearing (not equipped for the wind turbine below MW), 3 sets of generator bearings (deep groove ball bearings, cylindrical roller bearings), 2 sets of spindle bearings (spheroidal roller bearings), totally 9 sets.
In addition, there are also gearbox bearings. The gearbox has three structural forms. The first type requires 15 sets of bearings, the second type requires 18 sets of bearings, and the third form requires 23 sets of bearings. Thus, the average number of wind turbine bearings is 27 sets.
The structural forms of bearings for wind turbines mainly include four point contact ball bearings, cross roller bearings, cylindrical roller bearings, spherical roller bearings, and deep groove ball bearings. The yaw bearing is installed at the connection between the tower and the cockpit, and the pitch bearing is installed at the joint of the root of each blade and the hub.
Wind power bearing production process
1. Control the forging temperature.
2. Control the modulation process to ensure the mechanical properties.
3. Control the depth of the intermediate frequency quench hardened layer on the surface.
4. Avoid micro cracks on the surface.
The cleaning process of wind power bearing:
1. Inspection of forging blank
2. Rough turning
3. Finish turning
4. Molding finish turning
5. Heat treatment
6. Gear-hobbing and gear-milling processing
7. During drilling, according to customer requirements, it can be treated with blue, phosphating and vulcanization.
8. Rough grinding and fine grinding
9. Demagnetization, cleaning, assembly, surface coating, grease filling,packaging