A Study of Accelerated Life Test Conditions for Yaw Drive of Wind Turbine

풍력 발전기용 요 드라이브의 가속수명시험 조건에 관한 연구

Wind turbine, which is attracting part of the renewable energy and is researching continuously, is going to be large size for high efficiency. There is a yaw system rotating the nacelle, weighted about 600 tons, to be perpendicular with the wind direction blowing in the large wind turbine. The wind turbine is focusing on the reliability improvement because working environment effect is bigger than any other points and specially, the reliability improvement of the yaw drive is required by the customer because it is the key component of the wind turbine. Because of this, the establishment of criteria for yaw drive is required because yaw drive system is the part of the wind turbine closely related with ensuring the reliability. So, this study did the failure analysis of the yaw drive system, which is consisted with 10 sets of yaw drives through researching and analyzing the site conditions. Also this study designed the life test method based on the failure analysis and working condition of the yaw drive. To design the accelerated life test of the yaw drive, this study reviewed the torque, lubrication condition, and frequency of use and etc. Finally, this selected the torque as the acceleration factor which is affected mainly to the system and also, the test equipment was developed based on the requirement of the life and performance test.