Simulative investigation of ring creep on a planetary bearing of a wind turbine gearbox

Wind turbines (WT) must be further optimized concerning availability and reliability. One of the major reasons of WT downtime is the failure of gearbox bearings. Some of these failures occur, due to the ring creep phenomenon, which is mostly detected in the planetary bearings. The ring creep phenomenon describes a relative movement of the outer ring to the planetary gear. In order to improve the understanding of ring creep, the finite element method (FEM) is used to simulate ring creep in planetary gears. First, a sensitivity analysis is carried out on a small bearing size (NU205), to characterize relevant influence parameters for ring creep—considered parameters are teeth module, coefficient of friction, interference fit and normal tooth forces. Secondly, a full-scale planetary bearing (SL185030) of a 1MW WT is simulated and verified with experimental data.