Comparison of analysis techniques for the dynamic be- haviour of an integrated drivetrain in a wind turbine

In recent years wind energy has been the world’s fastest growing source of energy. The wind turbine industry is booming and is spending a lot on research for improving the performance of its present machines and increasing their capacity. However, upscaling of the classical drivetrain concept is no longer economically feasible for machine power of 2 MW and higher. This paper presents the preliminary results of dynamic studies on a new design concept for the drivetrain of a multi megawatt wind turbine. At first, a rather coarse finite element model is used to analyse the dynamic behaviour of the entire system. Then, a more detailed multibody model of the drivetrain is built for the analysis of torsional vibrations. Eigenmodes and eigenfrequencies obtained in this analysis using two different software packages are compared.