IKERLAN had the opportunity to attend the International Conference of Engineering Against Failure (ICEAF) in Spetses (Greece) on 21st June, where it presented the MEEVCE project.
The island of Spetses in Greece hosted the 7th International Conference of Engineering Against Failure on 21-23 June. The aim of the conference is to provide a forum every two years to present the most relevant scientific and technological achievements and to debate with an audience of international experts on the prevention of failures in engineering structures.
Mikel Escalero from IKERLAN had the opportunity to attend and present a work they have carried out within the framework of the MEEVCE project entitled "Development of a tool for the prediction of wear in spur gears. Application to wind turbine's pitch system".
A brief summary of the work is shown below:
In the work, a tool for wear prediction in spur gears of wind turbines has been developed. The tool can run in real time and function as a digital twin, and is based on a novel methodology that integrates different formulations to calculate locally at different points of the teeth: 1) the distribution of pressures and tangential stresses, 2) slippage and the energy dissipated by friction, and 3) finally the worn height. The partial results have been verified and the worn profiles have been contrasted with literature observations, obtaining a qualitatively acceptable correlation. Regarding the application of the tool to the use case of a pitch gear of the NREL-5MW model, it has been found that the worn height on both tooth flanks is of the order of the thickness of the hardened layer. Therefore, the nominal life of this pitch subsystem is optimally adjusted to the life of the wind turbine (with hardly any safety margin), so it seems to be a critical element for the life extension.