With the rapid development of China's wind power industry, it is inevitable to improve the requirements of wind power for the use of bearings. Wind power belongs to a special bearing, its use environment is bad, it needs high maintenance cost and high life. The high technical complexity of wind power bearing makes it one of the two most difficult parts of localization recognized by wind power industry. In order to break this situation, China's bearing industry has gradually formed a large-scale, systematic and key technology breakthrough, and China's wind power bearing product technology and quality has a certain breakthrough.

In a long period of time, domestic wind power bearings rely on foreign imports and are expensive, which increases the cost of wind power equipment per kilowatt and restricts the decrease of wind power cost. According to experts, in the wind power bearing, the technical threshold of yaw bearing and pitch bearing is relatively low, while the technical content of main shaft bearing and booster bearing is relatively high. The generator bearing is basically a general product with mature technology. At present, the production capacity of domestic wind power bearing enterprises is mainly concentrated on yaw bearing and variable slurry bearing, and the wind power equipment supporting bearing below 3 megawatt is mainly used. For the main shaft bearing and booster bearing, they basically rely on import, only a few domestic enterprises have initially set foot in it.

According to the leading technology R & D advantages in the industry, we have successively developed a series of supporting bearings for large MW wind turbine equipment with high bearing capacity, high reliability, high safety and long service life, and have broken through key technologies, completed a number of reliability tests with independent intellectual property technology and products, and realized industrialization. At present, Luozhou is speeding up the research and development of offshore wind power bearing with a capacity of more than 5MW, and striving to promote the full localization of such wind turbine bearing products.

The first 10MW offshore permanent magnet direct drive wind turbine in China

Shanghai, September 13, 2019 - a few days ago, China's first 10MW offshore permanent magnet direct drive wind turbine with full independent intellectual property rights was successfully developed in Dongfang Electric Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Dongfang motor"). As a key supplier and long-term partner, Schaeffler provides a high-quality, highly reliable adjustable arrangement single row tapered roller bearing solution for the wind turbine.

As the first 10MW offshore permanent magnet direct drive wind turbine with full independent intellectual property rights, the successful development of the generator is of milestone significance, reflecting the historic breakthrough of the independent brand of China's Dawa level wind turbine. According to the characteristics of offshore wind resources at home and abroad, the wind turbine adopts direct drive permanent magnet + full power frequency conversion technology route, which has excellent active typhoon resistance performance, and can select 8mW ~ 10MW power level according to the needs of wind farm. Thanks to the high bearing capacity and reliability of Schaeffler single row tapered roller main bearing, the power of the generator set may be further improved according to the actual demand in the future.

Tile shaft fills the gap for wind turbine

This year, the 4.0mw wind turbine speed increase box planetary gear bearing developed by Wazhou for world-renowned enterprises was put into production successfully. The successful development of this product marks that the tile shaft has completely broken through the key technical points of the bearing of the speed increasing box of 4.0mw or above wind turbine generator set, and filled in the domestic blank.

The localization of Wazhou wind power started 14 years ago. In that year, the national development and Reform Commission issued a new policy, requiring "localization rate of wind power equipment is more than 70%", in order to break the situation that foreign investment monopolizes China's wind power market at a high price.

High end bearing R & D involves a series of technical problems such as materials, grease and lubrication, manufacturing, design, bearing manufacturing equipment, detection and test, and also involves basic research and interdisciplinary subjects such as contact mechanics, lubrication theory, tribology, fatigue and damage, heat treatment and material organization. It is necessary to make a key layout in industrial development policy, technical development planning and other aspects to solve the problem of lagging development of high-end bearings in equipment manufacturing industry.