Study on predicting rolling contact fatigue of pitch bearing raceway in offshore wind turbine

Pitch bearing is the critical component that are widely used to ensure the operation of offshore wind turbine blades and enable efficient capture of wind energy. Uncertain environmental factors and extreme load conditions can induce early fatigue failure in pitch bearings, and lead to major accidents such as blade detachment. In this study, a damage coupling fatigue simulation model, considering residual stress (RS) and surface hardness effect, was constructed following the continuum damage mechanics (CDM) to investigate the rolling contact fatigue (RCF) of pitch bearing under ultimate loading conditions. Different ultimate loading conditions were calculated on an integrated load simulation platform established using Python script. The damage-coupled elastoplastic constitutive equation and damage-controlling equations considering RS and surface hardness were derived and programmed in the material user subroutine UMAT. The effects of ultimate loading conditions, RS, and surface hardness on RCF were studied. Results show that increasing the surface hardness or increasing the compressive RS enhances the anti-fatigue performance of pitch bearing.