Posters

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies offer immediacy, weight reduction and material efficiency to wind energy sector. In this work, two different AM technologies for manufacturing, maintenance and repairing, are applied to a part from the nacelle of a wind tower. A selected metallic part from the nacelle and concretely from the gear box was used to demonstrate the viability of AM. Gear box is the part of the nacelle that is more prone to cause wind tower stoppages followed by yaw system and pitch system. The part selected was a sun gear of the planetary gear box which normally suffers worn out of the teeth. This part was topologically optimised to be fabricated by AM. Concretely, Selective Laser Melting (SLM) technology was used for its manufacturing, which allows innovative designs reducing weight while maintaining the mechanical requirements. This technology only needs metallic powder and a CAD design to manufacture a new part. Optimised design reduced weight in 37 % compared to the original design. In order to be sustainable, reparation works were also demonstrated using Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) technology, depositing metallic powder on two simulated worn teeth. The reparation took just one minute and the deposited material efficiency was 90 %. This approach demonstrated that both used AM technologies contribute to the cost savings in onshore and offshore wind farms.