Study on accelerated life tests for main shaft bearings in wind turbines

This paper focused on a 2.1 MW wind turbine main shaft bearing as the research object and analyzed its reliability under actual working conditions for three years. An accelerated life test for the main shaft bearing in a wind turbine with an amplified load was carried out depending on the reference value of the radial dynamic load rating. The test was conducted for 140 days. The bearing did not show any noticeable damage at the end of the test, which shows that the bearing could be reliable for three years. To prove the correctness of the ALT, a finite element model of the main shaft bearing was created in ABAQUS to obtain the contact stress in both the actual working conditions and the accelerated test conditions. The calculation results were transferred to FE-SAFE to calculate the fatigue life. Finally, a comparison between the theoretical and simulation acceleration factors validated the rationality of the experimental design.