A wind turbine is subjected to a large variety of load cases due to wind fluctuations in speed and direction, and numerous starts and stops of the system. These generate large quasistatic and transient forces due to rotor thrust and torque, which heavily load the main bearing and gearbox components of wind turbine. Development teams have to carefully design these key components, so that they can withstand the accumulated forces, and to assure that the turbine remains operational for 20 years without major down-time.
LMS Virtual.Lab provides an efficient and reliable solution to predict and resolve potential fatigue issues in the early development phase. It uses component load histories based on measurements or derived from multi-body simulation. The time history approach uses all the significantly damaging events and automatically accounts for the correct phase relations of load components and correct mean stresses. LMS Virtual.Lab assesses the entire model of the structure, accurately identifies hotspots, and clearly visualizes the damage distribution. Furthermore LMS Virtual.Lab provides the tools to trace down the root causes of fatigue problems. It identifies the most damaging events and evaluates the contribution of a load to the total damage in a given component area.
