Thermal error prediction and reliability analysis of the main shaft bearing at wind turbines

During the operation of the gearless wind turbine, the phenomenon of heat generation in the main shaft bearing is inevitable and further affects the assembly preload. It is crucial to determine the effect of the thermal error on bearing assembly preload. In this paper, a reliability analysis method for main shaft bearing is proposed. Firstly, a finite element model for the thermal analysis of wind turbines is established based on heat transfer theory, and the thermal error of the preload is calculated. Subsequently, a reliability analysis of the main shaft bearing is conducted through Quasi-Monte Carlo simulation (QMCS) considering the influence of uncertainty factors. To further improve the computational efficiency, a surrogate model based on stochastic configuration network (SCN) is established to analyze the reliability and sensitivity of the bearing. Finally, the numerical example shows that the proposed model has high accuracy and applicability.