A series of short reports on global manufacturing growth and the gear industry's role.

Faithful Gear Technology readers may recall that our July 2009 issue contained an update of the deliberations provided by Bill Bradley. Now, almost two years later, there is an ISO/IEC wind turbine gearbox standard out for draft international standard ballot (ballot closes 2011-05-17).

Capitalizing on a burgeoning new technology where gears are of great import, the gear community gathered en masse at the American Wind Energy Association’s Windpower Expo 2010.

Although typically considered a late bloomer in the call to wind energy arms, the United States is now the number one wind power producer in the world with over 25,000 MW installed by the end of 2008, according to the Global Wind Energy Council in January 2009.

The global wind energy market has seen average growth rates of 28 percent over the last 10 years, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), creating major challenges for the component supply industry. GWEC also forecasts an average growth rate of 22 percent for the next five years, which if realized, will continue to put pressure on suppliers of turbine components.

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method is adapted, validated and applied to spinning gear systems with emphasis on predicting windage losses. Several spur gears and a disc are studied. The CFD simulations return good agreement with measured windage power loss.

Industrial gear standards have been used to support reliability through the specification of requirements for design, manufacturing and verification. The consensus development of an international wind turbine gearbox standard is an example where gear products can be used in reliable mechanical systems today. This has been achieved through progressive changes in gear technology, gear design methods and the continual development and refinement of gearbox standards.

This article shows the newest developments to reduce overall cycle time in grinding wind power gears, including the use of both profile grinding and threaded wheel grinding.

Natural resources—minerals, coal, oil, agricultural products, etc.—are the blessings that Mother Earth confers upon the nations of the world. But it takes unnaturally large gears to extract them.

Big gears and wind turbines go together like bees and honey, peas and carrots, bread and butter and—well, you get the idea. Wind isn’t just big right now, it’s huge. The wind industry means tremendous things for the energy dependent world we live in and especially big things for gear manufacturers and other beleaguered American industries.