This work presents a study of the tribological behaviour of a mineral fully-formulated
wind turbine gear oil additised with [BMP][NTf2] ionic liquid. The target application are
the wind turbine gearboxes, thus the fully formulated oil with and without ionic liquid
additive was tested in a rolling bearings test rig to measure the thrust rolling bearing
torque loss and was also tested in a FZG gear test rig to measure the gears torque
loss at operating conditions similar to the observed in a wind turbine gearbox.
The results show that a wind turbine gear oil additised with ionic liquid can reduce the
torque loss and improve the gearbox efficiency while producing less wear particles as
observed in the oil analysis.The authors thank to the Ministry of Science and Innovation (Spain) and to the
Foundation for the Promotion in Asturias of the Applied Scientific Research and Technology (FICYT) for supporting this research within the framework of the Research
Projects WINDTRIB (DPI2010-18166) and GRUPIN14-023, respectively.
The authors thank to Repsol S.A. that provided the wind turbine gear oil.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding supported by: National Funds through
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), under the project EXCL/SEMPRO/
0103/2012; COMPETE and National Funds through Fundação para a Ciência e
a Tecnologia (FCT), under the project Incentivo/EME/LA0022/2014; Quadro de
Referência Estratégico Nacional (QREN), through Fundo Europeu de
Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER), under the project NORTE-07-0124-FEDER-
000009 - Applied Mechanics and Product Development; without whom this work would
not be possible
