SHCM Plain Bearings Empower Goldwind to Build a World-Leading Wind Power Loading Test

In 2020, the global wind energy industry experienced explosive growth, making the shift toward larger megawatt and higher-power wind turbines an inevitable industry trend. Goldwind planned to pioneer the construction of the world's largest 16MW wind turbine loading test platform—a facility required to simulate the operating parameters of turbines under extreme conditions, placing demands on the performance, precision, and reliability of its core components far beyond those of conventional wind turbines. The main shaft diameter of the test platform exceeded 3000mm and required full spatial directional loading, making it a highly customized, ultra-large component whose selection posed a significant challenge.

To overcome this challenge, Goldwind initiated a comprehensive industry market survey, focusing on identifying enterprises with experience in the research, development, and application of ultra-large bearings. During this process, Goldwind discovered that as early as 2007, SHCM had successfully developed and applied self-aligning plain bearings for wind turbine main shafts and held the world's first national invention patent for wind turbine main shaft plain bearings. Over the years, this patented technology became a key reference for related research and development within the industry, with numerous academic papers and technical solutions drawing on its design principles.

Building on SHCM’s early research and development in wind turbine main shaft plain bearings, the two companies formed a dedicated R&D team to tackle the specific operational requirements of the 16MW test platform (such as full degrees of freedom, high loads, high-frequency cycling, and long-term continuous operation). They designed and progressively optimized a replaceable segmented bearing system solution. Through joint efforts, SHCM’s “modular + digital” wind turbine main shaft plain bearings were successfully installed and tested on the 16MW platform.

In 2022, the 16MW loading test platform equipped with SHCM’s modular and digital main shaft plain bearings was officially completed and put into operation. From trial runs to the present, the bearings have maintained stable performance, even under specific conditions more demanding than actual turbine operations, such as “extreme loading” and “high-frequency start-stop,” where they precisely controlled errors and ensured efficient operation, fully meeting the test platform’s requirements.

In 2024, to accommodate the testing needs of even higher-power turbines, Goldwind upgraded the test platform to enhance its testing capacity to 30MW. Notably, this upgrade did not require replacing the main shaft bearings—the SHCM plain bearings originally used for the 16MW platform were directly compatible with the 30MW conditions and continued to deliver stable performance.

The application of plain bearings in ultra-large equipment not only addresses “bottleneck” issues by replacing traditional rolling bearings but also enables lightweight designs to “reduce weight and streamline” wind turbines, offering a practical and effective technical pathway for industry cost reduction and efficiency improvement.