STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF SLEWING BEARINGS FOR WIND TURBINES

This study is a structural analysis of slewing bearings for wind turbines. The ball of a bearing delivers load while making contact with raceways of the inner and outer rings. To facilitate stress analysis of the slewing bearing, which has more balls than other types of bearing, the balls were converted into spring elements. Considering the shape of contact between balls and raceways, one, two, and three spring elements were introduced. Global finite element analysis of the bearing, with balls as spring elements, showed that the bearing experienced different degrees of deformation depending on the number of springs. Using the bearing deformation obtained from the global analysis, cut boundary constraint was applied for local contact analysis of balls and raceways. The contact stress between balls and raceways showed that more uniform stress could be achieved by increasing the number of springs.