Fault Mode And Effect Analysis Of Wind Turbine Gearbox

As the fast economic development from2000, China’s rapid growth in electricity demand has caused the people’s attention about the clean renewable energy such as wind power and solar power et al. From2005, China’s wind power has experienced a blowout type rapid growth. However, many problems have also been brought out with the development, such as the immature of the wind power market and companies, mere imitation of foreign technology resulted in domestic unit has no guarantee in product quality and after-sales, the time out relevant standards and regulations can not provide the companies reliable technical guidance, and so on. These need to be improved timely in order to ensure China’s wind power industry to continue its rapid and healthy development.This paper mainly investigates and analysis the gearbox which is the main part of the current mainstream wind turbine, double-fed wind turbine generator drive train to summarize the current common structure type of gearbox. And with two level planetary gear plus a one level parallel shaft driving gearbox is representative of the gearbox detailed description of the internal structure. Then in-depth statistical analysis of a domestic wind farm’s two years run and fault data were conducted. Including comparing the wind farm’s two years failure data with Sweden’s ten years failure data, summarizing the common operation fault conditions of domestic wind turbines and finding a potential law. Moreover, the run fault data of wind turbine gearbox combined with its typical fault model has also been investigated. Based on the statistical data, the fault model and effect analysis (FMEA) and criticality analysis (CA) of gearbox main structure has been conducted to determine the dangers ranking of all parts of gearbox. According to the results of gearbox fault data and FMEA, the gearbox maintenance guidelines of wind farm have been written. The guidelines can provide technical support and theoretical basis for wind farm site maintenance personnel to improve the reliability of gearbox, find and take measures when the fault occurred in the early stages. As a result, the damage of gearbox fault can be decreased to a minimum.