About the Drive Train

This section provides an overview of the various functionalities used to simulate drive trains in a Bladed wind turbine model. The drive train concerns the transmission type, the flexibility of the shaft, mechanical component definition and geometric properties and brakes. Multibody diagrams of the various drive train arrangements that can be simulated in Bladed are available for review.

To define and review the drive train definition in Bladed please select Power Train in the user interface. Note that while the inertia properties of the transmission layouts is specified in Transmission, the mass of the machinery is considered a property of the nacelle. To define the drive train the user can set the following inputs:

• The transmission consists of the gearbox and shafts. The user can specify dynamic models for either geared or direct drive transmission layouts. Alternatively the user can select a locked speed rotor.
• The flexibility of both the low-speed and high-speed drive shafts can be specified by the user.
• A mechanical losses model representing for example the gearbox efficiency can be specified by the user as a lookup table.
• A series of shaft brakes can be defined for turbine parked and stopping simulations.
• A slipping clutch can be added to the generator side of the high-speed shaft.
• In case the user wants to consider pallet mounting flexibility of the transmission system they may specify mounting flexibility.

User-defined drive train model options

Alternatively it is possible to simulate gearbox dynamics using external code and co-simulate with Bladed during a dynamic simulation. This is useful if the user would like to include gearbox dynamics that cannot be captured using the existing options in Bladed. This can be achieved using the Gearbox DLL interfaces.

Last updated 28-08-2024