Study on the Optimal Design Method of the Containment Ring for an Air Turbine Starter

Abstract

The airworthiness standards of transport category airplanes clearly stipulate that the equipment containing high-energy rotors must be shown by test that it can contain any failure of a high-energy rotor that occurs at the highest speed. The air turbine starter (ATS) is typical equipment containing high-energy rotors, and the manufacturers of ATS attach great importance to research on structural containment and weight reduction. In this paper, an optimal design method for a U-type containment ring is proposed. The method adopts the optimal Latin hypercube design, numerical simulation, response surface modeling, and genetic algorithm to achieve the multi-parameter optimal design of the containment ring section. By combining simulation and experiment, the influence weights of different structural parameters of the containment ring on the residual kinetic energy of debris and the containment ring volume were analyzed. The influence of different structural parameters of a U-type containment ring on containment results was studied, and a containment test was carried out to verify the containment capability of an optimized containment ring. The results show that the thickness of the containment ring has the greatest influence on the residual kinetic energy of the debris, and the weight ratio is 38%. The maximum radial deformation of the optimized containment ring can reach 22.3%, which means that the energy absorption effect of the containment ring on the disk fragments is significantly improved. With the same containment capability, the weight reduction effect of an optimized containment ring can reach 26.5%. The research results can provide weight reduction optimization methods and design theoretical guidance for U-type containment structures.