The FLEXTURBINE consortium is built around an industrially initiated nucleus: Core representatives of the European turbine industry have joined forces and involved leading European universities and research institutes to address the identified research and technology questions. They will cooperate to achieve the project objectives, sharing experience and know-how and developing results with complementary skills. The following figure outlines the contributions of each partner to the FLEXTURBINE topics and the impact on the future market drivers for flexible energy generation.
The consortium setup comprises all steps of the value chain and thus ensures that the technology is applied as soon as possible. The industrial design capabilities are complemented by selected high profile university departments, which are also involved in modelling activities as well as in preforming rig and component tests.
The Ruhr-University Bochum is one of the largest universities in Germany and part of
the Deutsche For-schungsgemeinschaft, the most important German research funding organization Research on fluid film bearings at RUB reaches back until 1969. But especially since the completion of the test rig for large turbine journal bearings in 1985, experimental and theoretical studies on radial journal bearings and sealing systems have been conducted continuously in the context of dissertations and industrial projects. Due to its unique equipment the test rig is able to measure turbine bearings in original size and gather film thickness and pressure distributions in very high resolution in both circumferential and axial direction.
Bearings are critical components of turbine systems. Hence, any new development regarding bearings
has to be verified strictly. In particular, experiments not only as model tests but in original size are crucial for innovative bearing techniques to find their way into application. The test rig for turbine bearings at RUB with its size and unique measurement equipment is best suited for this purpose.
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Sebastian Kukla kukla@lpe.ruhr-uni-bochum.de |
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Prof. Dr.-Ing. Beate Bender bender@lpe.rub.de |
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 653941
