The latest offer of products from SKF, the knowledge engineering company, has been introduced to improve the reliability, safety and performance of jack-up gearboxes. These are used in the offshore oil and gas industry for Mobile Offshore Drilling Units, and in the renewable energy industry in the liftboats for the construction of offshore wind turbines.
The product solution includes the CARB toroidal roller bearings and SKF Explorer Spherical Roller Bearings (SRB), which have been proven in many of the most challenging applications, plus high performance seals.
Unlike the traditional bearing arrangements used in jack up gearboxes, the CARB enables an improved gear to gear contact during severe load conditions and a greater load carrying capacity. This plays an important role in extending the total system life while reducing the risk of failure.
Jonas Kjellberg, global segment manager – Drives Industries at SKF, explained, “Our latest offer matches the high requirement set by the offshore sectors. It helps the OEMs and end users to extend the service life of the jack-up gearboxes, while reducing maintenance costs through improved component reliability. For example, our upgraded SKF Explorer self-aligning bearings have been shown to double the service life over our previous generation Explorer bearings, and to improve reliability by a considerably greater factor in severe conditions when compared with products from a number of other manufacturers.”
Both CARB and Spherical Roller Bearings feature the latest Explorer upgrade to a new generation of high performance bearing steels, manufactured using an improved heat treatment process. These bearing steels provide a superior balance between hardness and toughness, and extend wear resistance in applications with low rotational speeds, or where there are high levels of contamination.
Also available in the latest SKF offer is the HDSF2 large diameter seal, which incorporates a primary flouro-rubber sealing lip, PTFE excluder lip and chrome plated, carbon steel wear sleeve to prevent the ingress of contaminants and protect the integrity of the gearbox units. Furthermore, SKF lubrication solutions include automatic systems to keep the rack and pinion gear assembly precisely lubricated, thereby increasing productivity, reducing labor and improving safety.
The latest offers of SKF products for jack-up gearboxes will be on show at Motion, Drive & Automation at Hannover Messe 2015, and will be supported by an innovative and interactive App, showing the various products in a virtual gearbox.
