Milestone in High-Speed

A European turbine manufacturer entrusted NOVAGEAR with the development and design of a test bench gearbox. The nominal speed of 56’000 rpm posed great challenges to the design as well as to the manufacturing.

With a triple path power split concept, the gear mesh velocity could be limited to less than 200 m/s. A total of 18 individually adjustable oil injectors have been placed for cooling the gear meshes and gear bodies. The injectors allowed the targeted influencing of the steady-state temperatures as well as the ventilation and gear mesh losses during the test runs. Wireless temperature sensors integrated in the wheel bodies provided valuable information about the temperature distribution at various speed, load and cooling conditions.

Based on these test run results, it will now be possible to build turbo gears with pitch line velocities up to 220 m/s.

An international team of specialists took care of the production, testing and commissioning. The cooperation with this team proved to be very effective, so that the gearbox could be delivered on time within 6 months.