Blade bearings might not exactly be the most expensive components in a wind turbine, but damage to this fundamental part of the system can result in considerable downtimes and costs. By designing and testing blade bearings under realistic conditions reliable operation of future turbines shall be improved.
In the Highly Accelerated Pitch Bearing Test research project (HAPT) researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology IWES Nordwest and the Institute of Machine Elements, Engineering Design and Tribology (IMKT) at Leibniz Universität Hannover (Uni-versity of Hanover) work together with the IMO group to establish the foundations for the further development of blade bearings. It is also aimed that the project results will allow the use of individual pitch control systems for load reduction. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) provided € 10.7 million in funding for the project.