A study on the design of a new power transmission for wind turbines

Abstract

The single-rotor wind turbine remains the dominant design for energy production. However, this design requires improvements to overcome some of its limitations. The introduction of the dual rotor system regarded as improvement over the single-rotor system in Korea due to its high efficiency, despite Korea’s low wind quality. Many researchers have attempted to devise different dual rotor machines and assess their power production capabilities under similar wind conditions to those in Korea. Existing power transmissions for dual-rotor wind turbines have issues with the complexity of design, difficulty in manufacturing, high costs and low efficiencies. Therefore, the aim of this study was to design a new power transmission for the dual-rotor wind turbine with an alternative to the bevel-planetary system by using a planetary system. This new method is dependent on the torque ratio and not the gear ratio as in common gear systems. The design and analysis of each part, such as the gears, shafts, bearings and control mechanisms are included in this study. The design is based on the power transmission of a motor vehicle. A prototype of the design is manufactured to verify the proposed method. The experimental results show that the new planetary-type gear box incurs fewer energy losses, has a high efficiency and low manufacturing costs. It is anticipated that the proposed design might be suitable for use with commercial wind turbines.