Dynamic Modelling of Maximum Stress in a Faulty Wind Turbine Sun Gear: An FEM Approach

Wind turbine gearbox is the most critical subsystem which determines the reliability of the wind turbine. This is due to their high failure rates and long downtime per failure. Therefore, successful analysis of the maximum stress criterion provides a better understanding of failure occurrences. Investigating the maximum stresses in meshing gears typically reveals the occurrence of failure. These assist designers, engineers, and maintenance personnel in making strategic decisions to improve reliability and optimize operation. Because of its high susceptibility to cracks and pits, the sun gear of the wind turbine gearbox is the focus of this study. Furthermore, previous research has primarily focused on singular fault with no known study on the occurrence of two simultaneous defects in the same tooth under dynamic conditions. This investigation helps to distinguish the effects of singular and simultaneous fault occurrences on this failure parameter. The overall maximum stress of the healthy model is 1781.5MPa, while the overall max stresses of the cracked, pitted, and simultaneous fault models are 1841MPa, 2957.5MPa, and 2961.9MPa respectively. Furthermore, the percentage mean deviations of the full faulty responses from the healthy response were computed as 25.91%, 59.08%, and 58.92%, respectively. It is established that tooth pits are more efficiently diagnosed using the stress criterion than tooth cracks. Finally, in the event of a simultaneous occurrence, examining the max stress captures the most dominant fault.