SKF is building what it sayss is the world's most powerful large-size bearing test center on its Schweinfurt 'Werk 3' site. Workers needed just two days to cast the 3,000-ton foundation for the larger of the two new test rigs. Around 9 meters wide, 6 meters deep and 22 meters long, the pit that had to be filled was the size of two detached houses. The pit had to be filled quickly to ensure the concrete set correctly. Over the course of 19 hours, 150 mixer trucks brought in loads and discharged it in the pit, practically one vehicle every six minutes. "Obviously this was a logistical challenge," says Armin Schaab of SKF'sConstruction and Factory Planning team, "but quite clearly our detailed advance planning paid dividends. Everything ran like clockwork, and there were no incidents of note. This meant we were able to cast the 1,200 cubic meters as planned." The base is such a huge block because of the enormous forces likely to be unleashed by the test rig that will be anchored to it. The colossus among test rigs is intended, in particular, for the testing of gigantic rolling bearings for wind power. "It will be the first test rig in the world capable of testing not just a single main bearing but a complete bearing unit all at once," says Bernd Stephan, SKF's senior vice president, technology development. "The bearings themselves can have an external diameter of anything up to 6 meters and are intended for turbines in the 10-megawatt class. The test rig can subject structures of that kind to dynamic forces in all directions that, when combined, are many times greater than on the strongest test installation currently available." The future test rig also will allow rotational speeds on testing that will be considerably higher than currently available. Using these capabilities, SKF wants to simulate extreme dynamic loads of the order of several meganewtons or meganewton meters in as realistic a manner as possible. In view of power capacity of this order, the engineers from RENK Test System GmbH, the firm entrusted with the development, had to come up with a special fixing method that would direct the forces exerted on the station in a controlled manner along the correct paths. "We are making these efforts because the existing computational simulation models simply aren't capable of making truly realistic prognoses," says Dr Martin Göbel, manager of the test center project at SKF in Schweinfurt. "Our two new test rigs will provide a remedy in this respect and give us insights into processes that were previously inaccessible. The relevant findings will make the new test center a pioneering instrument in helping many customers from a wide variety of industries gain access to an energy-efficient future in a way that is tailored to the application in question."