Deformation measurements of lightweight gears

In order to meet climate protection targets, the trend in industry is developing towards resource conservation and energy savings through lightweight construction. Coupled with the objective of expanding the wind energy sector and installing wind turbines (WT) ≥ 5 MW, lightweight construction is also becoming significant for transmission technology. If the power of WTs increases, so does the mass and material consumption of WT components. Gearboxes also have to be dimensioned larger. In order to save resources and energy, the material consumption must be minimized in the design and manufacture of the gearboxes through lightweight construction. At the same time, the demand for long service lives of more than 20 years for wind turbine gearboxes remains. In addition, gear teeth in wind turbine gearboxes are exposed to high dynamic loads. Due to these high requirements, lightweight gears have not yet been used in wind turbine gearboxes. Within the framework of a research project, design guidelines for lightweight gears with integrated load monitoring for wind turbine gearboxes are therefore to be developed and implemented as a demonstrator. The design of the design guidelines is based on simulations, which will be validated in experiments.

The main objective of this work is to validate the design guidelines of first lightweight gear demonstrators by means of static and dynamic load tests. For this purpose, deformation measurements on statically or dynamically loaded lightweight gears are to be performed, compared with simulation results and subsequently evaluated.

Your profile:

• Interest in practical work and measurement technology
• Good technical understanding
• Experience in Ansys (optional)
• Independent work