Sweden: SKF Introduces Extended Range of Nautilus Bearing Solutions

Today, SKF introduces an extended range of SKF Nautilus bearing solutions that offer advanced, versatile and integrated features to meet the wind industry’s demands.

SKF Nautilus bearing solutions provide designers with 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.

“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 optimize wind turbine design and operation.

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. Another feature is the integrated seal and pre-greasing to provide optimized lubrication while reducing the risk of contamination and leakage.

SKF Nautilus is designed to enable easy seal replacement on top of turbine if required. A rubber or polyurethane material helps achieve high sealing performance, increased durability and extends the time between maintenance intervals. By supplying SKF Nautilus with the bolted inner ring and integrated seal, overall mounting and dismounting is greatly simplified and saves time and effort.

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.

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Offshore WIND staff, April 17, 2012; Image: skf