Research on structural fatigue residual life of pitch bearing rings after pre-damage
ZHANG Mingqian
CHEN Guanci
DING Yinke
LIU Minghan
MAO Huaping
Abstract：[Objective]The corrosion fatigue fracture of the wind turbine pitch bearing is a major failure mode,often leading to the blade detachment and shutdown.To this end,a finite element model of replacing the whole pitch bearing with a local one was proposed to investigate the structural fatigue remaining life of pitch bearings after corrosion of the raceways.[Methods]A combined method of finite element software Ansys and three-dimensional fracture mechanics software Franc3D was adopted to simulate the corrosion pit by inserting a pre-damage at the location of the maximum equivalent stress in the bearing ring.The crack propagation path and life of the corroded bearing ring were investigated under actual operating conditions.[Results]The results show that the remaining fatigue life of the corroded bearing ring under actual operating conditions is 2.2×107 cycles,ap-proximately 2.3 years,accounting for 11.6%of the design life.Through this results,the characteristics of the structural fatigue of the bearing ring affected by the corrosion can be better understood,providing guidance and reference for engineering practic-es in related fields.
Keywords：Pitch bearing ringCorrosionPre-damageRemaining fatigue lifeFranc3D software
Publication Date：2025-01-14
Online Publishing Date：2026-09-12(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：8( 37-43,52 )