Hansen Transmissions has announced an investment of more than € 10 million for the completion of a 13MW test bench for the dynamic testing of wind turbine gearboxes.
The investment involves the recruitment of five new members of staff. The new test infrastructure is being installed at the Lommel site, where multimegawatt gearboxes are produced for wind turbines. The company anticipate that the infrastructure will be ready for use in mid-2007. The test bench means that the dynamic behaviour of gearboxes can be measured and simulations carried out with overload and faster durability tests. The overload tests can also be carried out on the next generations of multi-megawatt gearboxes. The necessary flexibility is incorporated in order to be able to test different gearbox concepts.
