R&D Test Systems Builds Massive 25 MW Main Bearing Test Facility

In this episode, Peter Winther, Key Account Manager at R&D Test
Systems, discusses the construction of the world's most powerful
main bearing test facility at the Lindø Offshore Renewable Center
in Denmark. Winther provides fascinating insights into the
engineering challenges and scale of this groundbreaking 25-megawatt
facility, including details about its massive concrete foundation
and the specialized testing capabilities designed to simulate
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Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy's
brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow. Allen
Hall: Today we're joined by Peter Winther, Key Account Manager at
R& D Test Systems, a company that's revolutionizing how we test
wind turbine components. R& D Test Systems is currently
building the world's most powerful main bearing test facility at
the Lindo Offshore Renewable Center in Denmark. They have already
delivered the largest halt test bench for nacelle testing at the
same location and now these facilities are pushing the boundaries
of what's possible in wind turbine testing with capabilities up to
25 megawatts. Peter brings extensive experience in large scale test
system development and has been instrumental in multiple
groundbreaking projects at LORC. Peter, welcome to the show. Thank
you very much. Thank you for having me. All right, so you're
building a 25 megawatt main bearing test system. Facility. That's
big. That's very big. So just give it a sense of scale. How big is
a 25 megawatt bearing? Peter Winther: The bearing itself, I would
guess the inside diameter is more than four meters in a typical
bearing constellation. The test bench on the other high, on the
other side is also relatively big to be able to break that bearing
or bearings, depending on what you're testing. The test bench
itself pretty big. First of all, features a pretty decent size
concrete block or foundation at the bottom, which is roundabout 35
meters long. It took 30 hours to cast the whole thing. It was a one
continuous process. We had 280 trucks coming in and they were
coming in every six minutes. And so we basically took all, I think,
concrete production from Fyn, which is the island where Ålensø or
the test bench is being realized. And then we had back off plants
in case the plant went down because if you start casting, you can't
stop, you need to go ahead. You can't have a cold joint. Yeah.
Yeah. So that's the foundation itself. An essential thing when you
make a foundation like this is also to make sure it cools in the
right manner. You can't just cast it and then go away and then come
back in an hour or a week and then all is fine because then you
risk not having. The right material properties throughout the
foundation. So we had a more than one megawatt cooling system,
making sure that the cross-sectional temperatures throughout
different cross sec cross-sections and the foundation was right and
not too much of a difference, so we didn't get cracks and creeping
and unwanted properties at the end because you, you can't really
get rid of it. Allen Hall: When you take this project on, how many
engineering challenges are there? Obviously building the. Concrete
Foundation by itself is a massive undertaking. How many, how do you
break this down and how many big hurdles are there? We're Peter
Winther: in the lucky position that it's not, you can say, the
first time we're building a big test rig. It's the first time we're
building one that should break a 25 megawatt wind turbine main
bearing arrangement. So that's a first. We have some conceptual
building blocks, which we of course relied upon, but it's, the
biggest we've ever made. So there's always challenges. And it's
especially challenging when we need to break something very fast
that is at the limit of what is possible to manufacture at this
point in time. There's a reason why they're challenged with making
15 or 25 megawatt turbines or whatever they're saying they can
manufacture now. It's because the, you need also the technology to
make bearings sufficiently big enough machining. that you can
machine the whole thing. And we need To break something that is
intended for 20, 25 years of operation, we need to try to break
that in 6 to 12 months. So it's a bit of an engineering undertaking
to figure out, okay, how do we make our test bench capable of doing
that 24 7, also for 20 years. Allen Hall: I'm curious because
you've already built a 25 megawatt HALT, Highly Accelerated
Lifecycle Testing. At the LORC. And that's there. So what was the
need for a separate facility for the main bearing? What about main
bearings makes the requirements a little bit different? Peter
Winther: You can say in some areas the the 25 megawatt halt, It's
used for validation testing, so that is actually for testing the
entire drivetrain, meaning the DUT is an abbreviation we use,
device under testing in this case it's the nacelle. And for the 25
megawatt HALT test bench, we have already commissioned and there's
an operation over there. It's also Test the gearbox and the
generator which mean we need to be able to apply a pretty
significant amount of torque. Also, you wanna stress test the
gearbox. Ergo you want to have a lot of torque for the main bearing
for the main bearing test bench. That is not the case. You only
have to overcome the friction in the bearings because they don't
see the torque. The torque goes through the main shaft to the
gearbox at the back end, in case of a geared solution, and if not,
then it's directly to the generator, but that's where, why the
bearings are there. So it is actually, It's overdoing it to test
main bearings on the 25 megawatt Holt, because then you pay for a
huge direct drive motor in this case, which you don't need Allen
Hall: in the test. That makes total sense. Okay. And the issues
that the industry is having with main bearings is pretty evident
and onshore right now there's a lot of issues in the United States
at the moment. But when we get offshore, that becomes even more
critical as 25 megawatt turbines going to repair that gets
increasingly difficult. So this is a really key piece of equipment.
For offshore wind, isn't this probably the linchpin to success out
on the ocean? It's at Peter Winther: least very difficult to change
if something goes wrong. Let's put it like, everything is difficult
to change offshore, but the main bearing arrangement, everything is
attached to that in some way, more or less. It's the connection
between the rotating part and the tower. To some extent, so you
need to take off a lot of stuff if you are to change the main
bearing arrangement or the main bearings. So yeah, there's a lot of
challenges there and I guess what is evident and what they see is,
it is extremely important to test the bearings under the right
conditions. What they actually experience in one, in the real life,
to get as close to that as possible, which is also what has been
the focus. Focus on this test benches is the main bearing units. We
don't test main bearing standalone, just a bearing, and then turn
it around and try to bend it because it is very important, the
housing around it, how the load is distributed in the bearings.
What is it exposed to in the real life? You need to get as close to
that as possible. So that has also been one of the things. Focuses
for this main bearing test bench is it's main bearing unit. It's
main bearing systems We need to test. Joel Saxum: Is it actually
easier for the main bearing to support the load while it's
spinning? Or when it's static, the actual hub. Peter Winther: It is
when it's spinning. And I guess that's because you, if you have the
large load, when it's static, you risk that the oil is not properly
distributed in the bearings and so on. So ideally, if you have the
big loads, I'm pretty sure that the bearings would prefer to
rotate. So in Joel Saxum: this case, okay, now we're talking
testing them. How do you. Okay, so when we talk to this a little
bit off air, you explain to us like the test rig and what the
hydraulic rams look like to put pressure on it in different ways.
Do you do rotating testing and static testing with this thing for
an accelerated lifetime test, or how does that work? Peter Winther:
At the end of the day, it's of course up to the customer. They're
the experts in how to test their bearings. But on the other hand,
we are also trying not to limit them and what they can test. So it
is also something we've been discussing with them, what their needs
are in this area also. But. Ultimately, we also use bearings so we
have the same challenges and the same limitations. All, some of our
bearings, at least for the turbines that's going on right now, our
bearings are still somewhat bigger. We cannot at least we also put
in some constraints and say, okay, if you want to do static
testing, then it might not be full load or it might not be full
load for several days or whatever, as again, we need to make sure
that The large equipment doesn't break but again, we also need to
enable the customer to, to take their tests or their designs to the
limit. Joel Saxum: But that's, that's an R& D specialty, right?
That's what you guys do.