Laser alignment sets generators straight

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Excerpt: A laser aligning device lets maintenance crews align main shafts with generators for low vibration, thereby improving equipment reliability. Manufacturer Ludeca , Doral, Fla., says its Optalign Smart Wind comes with firmware features that ensure high measurement accuracy, and mounting hardwa …

Turbine drivetrain test lab goes to Clemson U

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Excerpt: DOE Secretary Steven Chu recently announced that Clemson University will receive up to $45 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the Stimulus bill) for a wind energy test facility that will enhance the performance, durability, and reliability of utility-scale wind turbines. The D …

Fast Accurate Flow Solver for Wind Turbine Simulations

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Excerpt: AcuSolve, a general-purpose finite-element-based flow solver, has evolved through years of development, experience, and feedback. The software's advantages are its reliability, speed, and accuracy. Users can rapidly obtain quality solutions without iterating on solution procedures or worrying ab …

Simulations Key to More Efficient Wind Farms

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Excerpt: How can a wind-turbine OEM as well as their countless suppliers squeeze more power from the wind using already well  developed equipment? Even a small efficiency increase would be welcome. The viability of the business depends on it. The wind business is also counting on such gains to improv …

Automated gearbox testing builds in consistency

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Excerpt: A gear manufacturer shows how it automated formerly time-consuming manual tests. William L. Winterbauer, Ph.D. Principal Engineer QED Services Ann Arbor, Mich. The U.S. military has demanding requirements for the hardware it needs. Take, for instance, a set of gearboxes built by Excel Gear Inc. …

High Precision Large Scale Gear Inspection

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Excerpt: With improved specifications and additional size availability, the new Leitz CMM from Hexagon Metrology Inc. is used for high precision inspection of extremely large components such as gears used in the windpower industry. Unlike some gear inspection products, the PMM-G does not require a rotary ta …

How to recognize drivetrain defects

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Excerpt: A Wind Turbine Drivetrain Diagnostics Simulator (WTDS) generates wind-turbine-drivetrain faults so users can learn to recognize signatures in a controlled environment. The setup lets users learn signatures of drivetrain component faults such as gear surface wear, cracks, chips, and missing teeth. By …

Simulation programs for the renewable-energy industry

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Excerpt: A range of simulation programs under the Ansys brand can models problems and equipment frequently encountered in the renewable energy industry. For wind turbines, the developer’s software models offshore wind-turbine foundations including fatigue and wave and current structure interaction; blade, …

CFD’s Role in the Windpower Industry

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Excerpt: Recent advances in CFD (computational fluid dynamics) codes and the availability of large scale computer “clusters” are guiding the design work of the next generation of wind turbines. Developers should be able to model a turbine’s power output versus wind velocity, and then the power output f …

Portable particle counter tattles on dirty oil

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Excerpt: The opto-mechanical LaserCM particle counter features a continuous wave, single-point source laser. Automatic Particle Counters (APC’s) have been widely used for many years to monitor the condition of hydraulic fluids. However, only recently have APCs become flexible enough to leave the lab and wo …