b'Engineer Innovation | Plant & ProcessHarnessing the Power of the WindBy Jo Loenders, Product Management Engineer, ZF Wind Powerconsists out of multi stage planetary and helical gear sets. A challengefaced in their design is that as the gearbox operates there is a large amount of heat produced both at the bearings and at the gear mesh contacts. If this heat generation is not balanced with proper cooling and lubrication, the excess heat will cause issues such as overheating of the surface resulting in failure mode scuffing. This will ultimately cause the failure of the machine, and a significant financial cost for repair or replacement, as well as the chancefor more catastrophic damage in extreme cases. Figure 1. Example wind turbine gear box This is why during the design of the gearboxes, much engineering time is Harnessing the power of the wind issources of renewable energy. Tospent ensuring these systems have the nothing new for humankind. Thecontinue to meet this growing need,appropriate flow rates and pressures. development of the sail for shipslarge numbers of wind turbines areOriginally this process took place using allowed for travel and explorationbeing constructed both on land and atMicrosoft Excel to calculate the around the globe. There is also thesea. As a business unit of ZFexpected flow rates based on the classic image of a windmill, whether itFriedrichshafen, ZF Wind Power is apressure drop of the individual parts of be the large Post Mill style found acrossleader in the design, manufacture,the gearbox flow paths. However this Europe or the multi-bladed wind pumpssupply, and servicing of wind turbinewas a very complex and time found across the Great Plains of thegearboxes. Since ZF Wind Power firstconsuming process as the distribution United States. These allowed humans toentered the wind turbine market insystems for the lubrication can involve settle into different areas by using the1979, its manufacturing plants havehundreds, even thousands of small energy of the wind and transforming itshipped more than 65,000 gearboxescomponents that result in pressure into useful work, such as pumpingpowering more than 120,000 megawattlosses. With this level of complexity it water or milling grains. While theseof installed wind capacity aroundwas important to validate the technologies can still be used today, it isthe globe. mathematical models with a no longer the translation of windcomponent level test and then run an energy into mechanical energy that is atThese gearboxes are a critical part ofexpensive verification of the combined the forefront of design but thethe turbine as they translate relativelysystems. The result was a fairly translation in electrical energy. slow moving rotation from the largeinflexible solution that required a blades to a much higher rotationalsignificant amount of engineering time In fact, wind power is growingspeed needed for the onboardboth in the model construction and the worldwide becoming one of the largestelectrical generator These systemsrequisite validation.18'