Investigation on the impact of electrical faults on the loads and exposures of wind turbine gears

Abstract

For the design of a wind turbine, it is necessary that the design process takes into account the stresses of real operation to a high degree of detail so that targeted dimensioning can be carried out. Depending on its design, the drivetrain of a wind turbine includes a gearbox that connects the rotor to the generator. During operation of a wind turbine, transient load conditions can occur due to loopback from the power grid and faults in the frequency converter. The influence of the resulting stress and possible damage to the gears used in the gearbox is unclear in the design phase. While the stresses on the gears can often be simulated with a high degree of accuracy for constant operating conditions and can thus be integrated into the drivetrain design, this is not the state of the art for dynamic load conditions. The objective of this report is a method for considering dynamic loading events in the design of the cylindrical gear stage used in wind turbine gearboxes using a coupled multi-body simulation and a finite element based tooth contact analysis. Afterwards the method is used to quantify the stress on the tooth flank and tooth root due to special electrical events such as short circuits between the frequency converter and generator or power grid faults for various converter designs. The simulation analyses show that different converter concepts have different effects on the resulting gear load during electrical faults, but are not significantly decisive for the accumulated damage due to elastic material behavior between generator and gear.