Stochastic Models of Defects in Wind Turbine Drivetrain Components

The drivetrain in a wind turbine nacelle typically consists of a variety of heavily loaded components, like the main shaft, bearings, gearbox and generator. The variations in environmental load challenge the performance of all the components of the drivetrain. Failure of each of these components of the drivetrain will lead to substantial economic losses such as cost of lost energy production, cost of repairs, cost of crew and cost of transportation. For offshore wind turbines, the marine environment affects the repair & maintenance process and in some case because of the rush environment, the maintenance team cannot operate properly and the wind turbine does not work for several days and consequently the cost of lost energy increases drastically. In this paper is presented stochastic models for fatigue failure based on test data and the accuracy of the models are compared.