College - Author 1

College of Engineering

Department - Author 1

Mechanical Engineering Department

Degree Name - Author 1

BS in Mechanical Engineering

College - Author 2

College of Engineering

Department - Author 2

Mechanical Engineering Department

Degree - Author 2

BS in Mechanical Engineering

College - Author 3

College of Engineering

Department - Author 3

Mechanical Engineering Department

Degree - Author 3

BS in Mechanical Engineering

College - Author 4

College of Engineering

Department - Author 4

Mechanical Engineering Department

Degree - Author 4

BS in Mechanical Engineering

Date

6-2022

Primary Advisor

Dan Castro, College of Engineering, Mechanical Engineering Department

Abstract/Summary

New offshore wind turbine farms are currently in development on the East Coast and off California’s Central Coast. Preliminary design considerations from mechanical and civil engineers are needed to ensure constructability of these deep-water, floating-platform wind farms, which will then be connected to the power grid at the grid ties of Morro Bay and Diablo Canyon. The purpose of this project is to design an epicyclic gearbox fit to take in the torque loads from the slowly rotating rotor shaft and successfully output a significantly faster rotating motor shaft to allow more accessibility to generator options including ones with far fewer poles. The motivation here being that the precious metals used in the magnetic poles are scarce and very expensive. Our team designed a full-size model for the gearbox and then manufactured a scaled down prototype to test our design and display at the senior design expo. We were able to build a working two-stage model of our designed gearbox with the required gear ratio. We saw that even with sub-optimal materials, the design is very efficient at delivering power from input to output. Our design provides a great amount of strength and would be usable in the largest wind turbines around the world.

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