Full Life Wind Turbine Gearbox Lubricating Fluids

Technical Report · Tue Feb 28 00:00:00 EST 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1041556· OSTI ID:1041556

Lutz, Glenn A. ^[1]; Jungk, Manfred ^[1]; Bryant, Jonathan J. ^[1]; Lauer, Rebecca S. ^[1]; Chobot, Anthony ^[1]; Mayer, Tyler ^[1]; Palmer, Shane ^[1]; Kauffman, Robert E. ^[1]

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1. Dow Corning Corporation, Midland, MI (United States)

Industrial gear box lubricants typically are hydrocarbon based mineral oils with considerable amounts of additives to overcome the lack of base fluid properties like wear protection, oxidation stability, load carrying capacity, low temperature solidification and drop of viscosity at higher temperatures. For today's wind turbine gearboxes, the requirements are more severe and synthetic hydrocarbon oils are used to improve on this, but all such hydrocarbon based lubricants require significant amounts of Extreme Pressure (EP) additives to meet performance requirements. Perfluoropolyether (PFPE) fluids provide load carrying capacity as an inherent property. During the course of the project with the main tasks of 'Establish a Benchmark', 'Lubricant Evaluation', 'Full Scale Gearbox Trial' and 'Economic Evaluation', the PAO Reference oil exhibited significant changes after laboratory gear testing, in service operation in the field and full scale gearbox trial. Four hydrocarbon base oils were selected for comparison in the benchmarking exercise and showed variation with respect to meeting the requirements for the laboratory micro-pitting tests, while the PFPE fluid exceeded the requirements even with the material taken after the full scale gear box trial. This is remarkable for a lubricant without EP additives. Laboratory bearing tests performed on the PFPE fluids before and after the full scale gear box trial showed the results met requirements for the industry standard. The PFPE fluid successfully completed the full scale gear box test program which included baseline and progressive staged load testing. The evaluation of gears showed no micro-pitting or objectionable wear. By the final stage, lubricant film thickness had been reduced to just 21% of its original value, this was by design and resulted in a lambda ratio of well below 1.

• Research Organization: Dow Corning Corporation, Midland, MI (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
• DOE Contract Number: EE0001364
• OSTI ID: 1041556
• Report Number(s): DOE/EE--0001364-1
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

17 WIND ENERGY
ADDITIVES
AGING
BEARINGS
CAPACITY
Clipper
DOE Award DE-EE0001364
Dow Corning
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
EFFICIENCY
FOA DE-PS36-09GO99009
Full Life
Gearbox Efficiency
HYDROCARBONS
L-8200
LUBRICANTS
LUBRICATION
Liberty
METRICS
MOTORS
Micropitting
Molykote
OXIDATION
PERFORMANCE
PFPE
Perflouropolyether
RELIABILITY
SOLIDIFICATION
STABILITY
Synthetic Lubricant
TESTING
THICKNESS
UDRI
University of Dayton Research Institute
VISCOSITY
WIND TURBINES
Wind Turbine Efficiency
Wind Turbine Gearboxes
Wind Turbine Lubrication
Wind Turbine Reliability
Wind Turbine Research