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Good News! In line with the development trend of "sliding instead of rolling", focusing on independent research and development of high-end bearings

Publish Time:

2023-01-14 11:24

Source:

Hunan SUND Science and Technology Co., Ltd.

Wind Turbine Image

During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the annual average growth rate of China's wind power grid-connected capacity was 16.9%, maintaining a high-speed development momentum. According to statistics from the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), by the end of 2020, China's cumulative installed wind power capacity reached 284.6 GW, accounting for 38.3% of the global cumulative installed wind power capacity. ("China Electric Power Development Report 2020", Electric Power Planning & Design Institute)

Bearings are one of the core components of wind power equipment, and the development of ultra-large wind turbines is an effective measure to achieve grid parity for wind power. However, the direct problem currently hindering the large-scale development of wind power equipment is that if wind turbine gearboxes still use rolling bearings, their bearing radial dimensions will continue to increase, leading to a continuous increase in the failure rate of bearing fatigue and wear. At the same time, the large-scale development of rolling bearings will further increase manufacturing costs and the overall weight of the equipment, and may further affect the construction cost of the tower base.

SUND Technology focuses on building a research and development team for wind power sliding bearings and processes. Through independent research and development, it has mastered simulation calculation technologies considering elastohydrodynamic lubrication, mixed friction, and edge finishing, and special materials such as PEEK and copper-tin alloy forming technologies. The experimental center has a full-condition bearing testing platform for reliability testing and can complete factory type tests for gear box sliding bearings within 500mm. SUND Technology's wind turbine gearbox design and development process passed DNV-GL certification in August 2021, and the wind turbine gearbox test bench and testing process passed DNV-GL certification in March 2022.

Currently, the design of sliding bearing wind turbine gearboxes at home and abroad is in a parallel stage. The "sliding instead of rolling" wind turbine bearing research conducted by SUND Technology is an effective technical approach to reduce costs and increase efficiency for ultra-high-power wind power equipment and achieve the localization of high-end wind power bearings, which is of great significance for overcoming the difficulties of "stuck necks" in foreign wind power bearings.