Romax Technology leads the way in wind energy consultancy and software

Romax Technology offers technical consultancy, design services and software for drivetrains, gearboxes and bearings. Our expert Engineering Team coupled with conceptually advanced software provides a unique blend of practical design experience and advanced analytical techniques. We have been recognised for our dedication to innovation and exceptional engineering capabilities by the worlds leading OEMs and transmission and engineering companies within the transport and energy industries.

Our expert Consultancy Team includes some of the leading technical specialists in the mechanical engineering and manufacturing sectors. Our commercial knowledge, academic excellence and practical experience allow us to produce innovative and effective solutions to complex problems. It is the quality of our team that ensures your products are efficient, reliable and competitive.

The wind energy industry is young and growing fast. Our Consultancy team understands the market dynamics, drivers and technical issues you face. Our market research can give you confidence in strategy and product development. We can deliver quality research in both technical and commercial arenas as well as provide insight into international markets in the wind energy industry and give you a comprehensive understanding of technical issues facing the wind industry.

We have also developed an industry focused software package that produces in-depth results for deflections, alignments, vibration and dynamic response of wind turbine gearboxes in record time. The accuracy and speed of RomaxWIND software allows complex numerical simulations to be performed up front in the design cycle, so that system interactions between gearbox, drivetrain and turbine can be considered in full.

Who is Romax Technology?
Romax Technology was founded in 1989 by Dr. S. Y. Poon, MBE, who has worked alongside the world’s leading transmissions and engineering companies, developing bespoke software solutions and providing engineering consultancy services to meet their growing needs. RomaxDesigner, our pioneering full-system flexibility and integrated software package, encompasses 19 years of development and benchmarking in partnership with major OEMs and extensive research in conjunction with top academic establishments. Our customised and ‘off-the-shelf’ software provides you with the tools for ‘right-first-time’ transmissions and driveline design and analysis and our engineering services offer you access to development training including technology transfer.

In 2004, we were awarded the prestigious Queens Award for International Trade and more recently we have earned an honourable mention in the IT Supplier category of the prestigious 2008 Automotive News PACE [Premier Automotive Supplier’s Contribution to Excellence] Awards. This award recognises the superior innovation, technological advancement and business performance that we transfer and apply to the wind energy market.

A Whole System Approach
RomaxDesigner, the full software suite includes RomaxNVH, RomaxDurability, and RomaxDynamics and offers a single environment to meet all your requirements for modelling, simulation and analysis of geared transmission systems enabling design, analysis, durability and NVH teams to speak the same language; streamline and improve processes and deliver your requirements faster and better than ever before. Our unique software provides you with a number of benefits including: quieter designs, quicker solutions, reduced number and length of design cycles and the ability to make design changes and accurately assess their effects.

Our approach to CAE software provides you with a totally integrated approach to the design, analysis and virtual testing of a gearbox. This whole system approach enables packaging, durability, noise and vibration issues to be dealt with as a whole; thereby enabling complex trade-offs to be made up-front in the design cycle. This concurrent, multi-physics approach requires fast, yet accurate simulations of complex mechanical systems. An example of this is the system flexibility model used within RomaxDesigner to simulate all deflections and load sharing of components within planetary systems.

Over the past two decades, we have been leading the way in drivetrain simulation for automotive and aerospace applications. In particular, the drivers in automotive applications have been extremely tough as they strive for low cost, low weight and high reliability whilst increasing the requirements for power density, low noise and short lead times. The development of innovative simulation tools has enabled Our's customers to radically cut lengthy development and test cycles by up to 80%; saving cost and improving product quality. We have now extended these simulation tools into the wind energy market offering a complete software and consultancy solution for wind turbine gearbox and bearings reliability.

Developing RomaxWIND – an industry specific software tool
When we r ecently launched our latest RomaxDesigner software package, release R12.6, it also included a completely new wind turbine specific product line called RomaxWIND. This industry specific module reflects the importance that wind energy now plays within our company structure.

Our mission is to provide the most complete environment for virtual product development of wind turbine nacelle drivetrains, gearboxes and bearings. RomaxWIND provides an “all-in-one” software tool tailored for wind turbine applications and encompasses the design, sizing and optimisation of drivetrain systems. This accuracy and speed enables complex numerical simulations to be performed up front in the design cycle, so that system interactions between the gearbox, drivetrain and turbine can be considered in full.

The software is also designed to be integrated within the design process and to harness existing investment in software tools. RomaxWIND provides interfaces to common analysis tools used up and downstream in the design, such as SIMPACK for additional multi-body simulation and Garrad Hassan’s Bladed for whole turbine dynamics.

Collaboration is key to delivering cutting edge technology
Collaboration between us and our key users of the software is one of the fundamental ways we define the necessary features and enhancements that differentiate RomaxWIND from the standard RomaxDesigner product. “Collaborative working is central to the way in which Romax works and to the development of our software package,” said Andy Poon, Director of wind Energy at Romax Technology. One example is the work with INTEC to provide more detailed but easy to use methods for transient dynamic simulation of gearboxes and drivelines, which can interface with existing software solutions for NVH and durability.

“Our new wind specific software package has , in a large way, been derived from the consultancy work for large wind turbine drivetrain design that we have carried out coupled with speaking to industry leaders on important issues such as drivetrain dynamics and fast analysis of large flexible bearings.”

“Working together with our clients enables us to expand the skills and capabilities of our consultancy team and it also helps us to develop our products, making them invaluable to those who work with it,” concludes Poon.

In 2004 we entered the wind turbine market and began to build up extensive knowledge in the industry. More recently we have taken our renowned bearing simulation technology and applied this to SIMPACK, to provide an easy to use interface and advanced non-linear analytical bearings models within a multi-body dynamics environment.

This enables transient dynamic analysis of complex transmission and driveline systems to be performed effortlessly, reducing cycle times and ensuring errors do not occur in modelling or data transfer. We have extended these simulation tools into the wind energy market offering a complete software and consultancy solution for wind turbine gearbox and bearings reliability.

“Speed is essential to the success of this venture, and Romax Technology has not only provided us with the technology transfer and engineer training to empower our engineers with the expert design and development, but it has also given us the software tools to allow us these design solutions to evolve much faster.” Mr. S. K. Lee, Hyosung Vice President.

We have a number of active research projects with leading European Universities that ensure our knowledge and technology remains at the cutting edge. This research feeds directly into our development process ensuring that our customers benefit by using the highest level of technology integrated into a user-friendly software package.

Demonstrating Knowledge and Experience
We have resolved a vast range of drivetrain issues, from hub to generator, for all types of companies. Large industry leading turbine manufacturers utilise our skills to improve and refine their existing products while new-to-market manufacturers benefit from our technology transfer. This range of clients and projects has afforded us experience of a variety of turbine systems and sizes, from 750kW to 3MW and a client portfolio that includes, turbine manufacturers, gearbox manufacturers, bearing manufacturers, wind farm operators, asset managers.

In the UK, we are undertaking technical investigation into the cause of failures in a number of offshore turbines for a major European energy company. Increased downtime and a reduction in revenue have led the energy company to look to us to identify faults, instigate short term fixes and provide long term solutions to overcome the inherent design faults in turbines. G rounded in practical engineering, design know-how and acute theoretical understanding, we are ideally equipped to carry out such forensic investigations.

Another important wind energy market for us is Asia, which although young, is rapidly growing. The region is recognising its need to gain knowledge and expertise quickly in order to develop effective technologies and is looking to the experience and knowledge of companies such as Romax to assist in satisfying the regions huge renewable energy need.

One of China’s largest certification companies, China Classification Society (CCS) recently invited us to share our knowledge and expertise with the regions leading turbine manufacturers and operators. We visited CCS headquarters in Beijing to demonstrate the capabilities and applications of our consultancy and software.

Following the success of the seminar, CCS purchased our world leading software as a key tool in the development of their wind turbine certification business. The simulation and analysis tools are now essential in enabling CCS to accurately assess the reliability and safety of Chinese wind turbine designs as part of the certification process.

Our experience and knowledge has also been applied to one of Asia’s largest transformer and electric transmission system producers, Baoding Tianwei. Both companies completed a joint project to design the main rotor bearing housing for a 1.5MW wind turbine that recently passed the technical report in readiness for the Germanischer Lloyd certification. Mr Zhang Wanxiang, Vice General Director of Tianwei, worked directly with Dr Yongle Song, Romax Project Manager and Mr Michael Barnes, Principal Engineer. “Working with Romax has allowed us to develop this critical component and take into account so many different factors within our design. The computer aided engineering simulation has proved invaluable, giving us confidence in the design.”

We are also assisting component manufacturers and recently secured a project with Shanghai United Bearings, which intends to review and validate a wind turbine pitch and yaw bearing design for use in a 1.25MW turbine. During the course of the project, Shanghai United Bearings hope to learn from our extensive bearing design and development expertise.

A Global Company for a Global Industry
Our Headquarters are in Nottingham, UK but we also have sales and support locations worldwide in Germany, Japan, China, Korea, USA and India. To support global sales and to promote a global service culture, we actively seek out native speaking and foreign nationals from some of the key territories that we are working in, such as Korea, China, France, Germany and Japan.

We also recognise the need for a high level of pre-sales and after sales support, as this re-enforces the high value-adding nature of our brand and also underpins the recurring revenue from software maintenance contracts. Invariably, this will require local representation at a sufficiently high technical level. Where this is not possible, then our clients will be supported by regional hubs or the UK based headquarters.

Looking to the future
We are now considered one of the foremost independent consultants for bearing design and manufacturing technologies in the wind energy market and our engineering teams offer a complete range of services in component design and analysis. We work across everything from design concept generation, design review, detail design through to manufacturing and certification, failure analysis and technical support for drivetrain operational maintenance issues.

We are aiming at developing full capabilities in the design and development of the whole mechanical drive train of wind turbines, from static to transient dynamic analysis. We will develop our global wind market with constant internal software and consultancy development as well as forming partnerships to offer a full spectrum of services for the wind turbine drivetrains industry.