SKF Nautilus bearings cut wind turbine maintenance costs

May 15, 2012 - PRLog -- SKF has introduced an extended range of SKF Nautilus bearing solutions that can increase the reliability and reduce the maintenance costs of wind turbines.  The new features of SKF Nautilus include the option to incorporate a bolted inner ring, eliminating the influences of fits and tolerances of the structure surrounding the bearing, reducing pre-load variation and resulting in higher operational reliability and safety.  SKF Nautilus bearings also feature integrated seal and pre-greasing to provide optimised lubrication while reducing the risk of contamination and leakage.

SKF Nautilus bearings offer advanced, versatile and integrated features to the designers of wind turbines that enable them to meet the wind industry’s demands.  The bearings give designers the freedom to develop a wide variety of turbines including direct drive, turbines equipped with a gearbox, with outer or inner ring rotation, and mounted on shafts or directly bolted onto the surrounding structure.

The industry trend toward increased turbine size, remote locations and harsh environments calls for technology advances - more compact and lighter nacelles, and components with built-in reliability and serviceability – and SKF has addressed that need with the launch of SKF Nautilus bearings.

“With the new range of SKF Nautilus bearings, SKF continues to be at the forefront of innovations.  The development benefits manufacturers and the growing service sector for repairs, upgrades and replacements and contributes to reducing the cost of energy,” says Andreas Urban, Business Engineer, SKF Renewable Energy.

SKF is a major supplier to the wind power industry.  In collaboration with wind turbine manufacturers and design consultants, many wind turbine designs have been equipped with SKF Nautilus bearings.  This broad experience contributed to the development of the SKF Nautilus range expansion to further optimise wind turbine design and operation.

SKF has developed special surface treatments to protect against corrosion and to increase friction between mating surfaces contributing in transmitting torque. SKF also offers the option of a single-pocket segmented cage featuring an even higher degree of flexibility to cope with deflections occurring in operational conditions, thus contributing to further increased reliability.

For further information, please contact: Phil Burge, Communication Manager, SKF (U.K.) Limited
T: +44 (0)1582 496433   M: +44 (0)7770 647591   phil.burge@skf.com

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SKF is a leading global supplier of bearings, seals, mechatronics, lubrication systems and services which include technical support, maintenance and reliability services, engineering consulting and training. SKF is represented in more than 130 countries and has 15,000 distributor locations worldwide. Annual sales in 2011 were SEK 66,216 million and the number of employees was 46,039. www.skf.co.uk