Safety Assessment of Aircraft Fuel Tank Access Cover under the Impact Load by Tire Fragments

According to relevant airworthiness standards, the aircraft fuel tank access cover must withstand the impact by tire fragments, and minimize the penetration and deformation, which is critical for flight safety. To assess the safety of an aircraft fuel tank access cover subjected to tire fragments, a study of dynamic response was presented in this paper using the Finite element(FE) software ANSYS/LS-DYNA. To obtain the reliable mechanical characteristics of tire tread rubber, a series of material tests have been conducted. Then the proposed rubber material model is validated by comparing the numerical simulations with the experimental results of aluminium alloy plate impact. The simulation results indicate that the rubber fragment and alloy plate will undergo the largest deformation when impact angle is equal to 90°. Finally, the proposed FE model and modelling approaches are extended to the numerical simulation of a full-scale aircraft fuel tank access cover impact. The numerical simulations are carried out with impact velocity of 71.1 m/s and impact angle of 40.5°. The simulation results indicate that the aluminium alloy by precision casting is more likely to rupture, and the middle region of the access cover is vulnerable to fragment impact. This research proposes a reliable rubber model applying to various strain rates. Considering the influence of impact regions, the dynamic response and various failure patterns of fuel tank access cover are acquired. The findings of this paper can be used to improve the future aircraft safety design.

Plasma discharge characteristics of segmented diverter strips subject to lightning strike

In order to research segmented diverters for aircraft lightning protection, a transient 2 D multiphysics model based on magnetohydrodynamics theory is proposed to predict the location of the arc plasma discharge and lightning channel, and to simulate the electrothermal behavior.Based on numerical calculation and preliminary analysis, factors that affect the breakdown voltage of the segmented diverter are discussed. The results show that the voltage increase rate of the voltage source, the width of the air gap between metal segments and the geometry of these segments influence the breakdown voltage of the strip. High-voltage tests of the segmented diverter are performed to reveal air breakdown of the strip and redirect the lightning current.Experimental and numerical results are compared to verify the correctness of the numerical model. The ionization of the air gap between metal segments and the breakdown voltage of the strip calculated by the model are qualitatively consistent with experimental results. The breakdown voltage of the segmented diverter is far lower than the lightning voltage. When a lightning strike occurs, the segmented diverter can be quickly ionized to form a plasma channel which can guide the lightning current well.

Equivalent model of close-packed film cooling holes in nickel-based single crystal cooled blade based on crystallographic theory

The mechanical properties of nickel-based single crystal thin-walled plate with close-packed film cooling holes were studied based on the equivalent solid material concept. The effective plastic parameters inversion method based on crystallographic theory were proposed. A simplification method for close-packed film cooling hole plates with square and triangular penetration patterns was presented. A large number of finite element analysis results covering different ligament efficiencies and penetration patterns were provided to verify the feasibility of the plastic equivalent principle and simplification method. The results show that the stress–strain curve and resolved shear stresses of simplification models are in consistence with the plate models with close-packed film cooling holes. The equivalent errors of yield strength are all within the error band and the values of equivalent errors are all less than 10%. In addition, the equivalent errors of the positions where maximum resolved shear stress occurs are all less than 15°, indicating the accuracy of plastic equivalent model and simplification method.

Nonlinear Parametric Vibration of a Fluid-Conveying Pipe Flexibly Restrained at the Ends

In this paper,the nonlinear parametric vibration of fluid-conveying pipes flexibly restrained at both ends and subjected to the pulsation flow excitation is investigated.The nonlinear equation of motion is derived using Hamilton^principle by considering the Kevin-Voigt viscoelastic damping,the geometric nonlinearity and the translational and rotational springs supported at the ends.The mode functions and eigen-frequencies are determined by the assumed mode method according to the elastic boundary conditions.The Galerkin method is implemented to obtain the natural frequencies and mode shapes of the pipe conveying fluid with different flow velocities.The effects of flexibly restrained conditions on stability of the pipe are analyzed.The nonlinear responses of the pipe under pulsating flow excitation are solved by the direct numerical method.The vibration behaviors are discussed in details,such as time history,frequency spectrum,phase-plane portrait,Poincare map and motion trajectory.The results show that the responses of sub-harmonic resonance and combination resonance can also be reflected in the rigidly supported pipes.The 1/5,1/8 and 1/13 sub-harmonic resonances can occur at certain excitation frequencies of the nonlinear parametric vibration system.The steady-state response amplitudes increase by a large margin and significantly affect the stability of the pipe.The effects of different spring stiffness coefficients on the parametric resonance responses are presented.For larger translational springs and rotational stiffness coefficients,the resonance frequencies shift to higher regions and the resonance amplitudes may reduce by a certain extent in accordance with the rigid-body motion.This study can provide helpful guidance on the analysis and design of piping systems subject to vibrations.

Reliability and reliability sensitivity analysis of structure by combining adaptive linked importance sampling and Kriging reliability method

The application of reliability analysis and reliability sensitivity analysis methods to complicated structures faces two main challenges:small failure probability(typical less than 10-5)and time-demanding mechanical models.This paper proposes an improved active learning surrogate model method,which combines the advantages of the classical Active Kriging–Monte Carlo Simulation(AK-MCS)procedure and the Adaptive Linked Importance Sampling(ALIS)procedure.The proposed procedure can,on the one hand,adaptively produce a series of intermediate sampling density approaching the quasi-optimal Importance Sampling(IS)density,on the other hand,adaptively generate a set of intermediate surrogate models approaching the true failure surface of the rare failure event.Then,the small failure probability and the corresponding reliability sensitivity indices are efficiently estimated by their IS estimators based on the quasi-optimal IS density and the surrogate models.Compared with the classical AK-MCS and Active Kriging–Importance Sampling(AK-IS)procedure,the proposed method neither need to build very large sample pool even when the failure probability is extremely small,nor need to estimate the Most Probable Points(MPPs),thus it is computationally more efficient and more applicable especially for problems with multiple MPPs.The effectiveness and engineering applicability of the proposed method are demonstrated by one numerical test example and two engineering applications.

NORMAL CONTACT STIFFNESS OF THE ELLIPTIC AREA BETWEEN TWO ASPERITIES

A new expression for contact deformation is given, and the normal contact stiff- ness between single asperities is derived according to Hooke＇s law. A contact model between two ellipsoidal asperities is simulated by the FE method, the result compared with the theoretical solution. It is found that the curves of the normal contact stiffness versus the included angle in the principal curvature direction show similar trends and evolve as a cosine feature. The effects of the parameters on normal contact stiffness are found to show that normal contact stiffness increases and reaches the upper limit gradually with an increase in these parameters.

Regional moment-independent sensitivity analysis with its applications in engineering

Traditional Global Sensitivity Analysis（GSA） focuses on ranking inputs according to their contributions to the output uncertainty.However,information about how the specific regions inside an input affect the output is beyond the traditional GSA techniques.To fully address this issue,in this work,two regional moment-independent importance measures,Regional Importance Measure based on Probability Density Function（RIMPDF） and Regional Importance Measure based on Cumulative Distribution Function（RIMCDF）,are introduced to find out the contributions of specific regions of an input to the whole output distribution.The two regional importance measures prove to be reasonable supplements of the traditional GSA techniques.The ideas of RIMPDF and RIMCDF are applied in two engineering examples to demonstrate that the regional moment-independent importance analysis can add more information concerning the contributions of model inputs.

Numerical simulation of broken pin effects on the flow field and cooling performance of a double-wall cooling configuration

In this paper, the flow characteristics of the double wall structure are presented and the effect of the broken pin size on the cooling performance and flow field of the double wall configuration is investigated. A periodic plate model with seven units is adopted, and there are an impingement hole and a film hole in each unit. Under five blowing ratios, six different sizes of the broken pin are compared, and the double wall configuration without broken pins is taken as the baseline.The results show that if the broken pins height is too small, the cooling effectiveness usually cannot be improved. With the presence of broken pins with a height of more than 0.4, the effectiveness is improved due to the enhancement of reattachment and recirculation of coolant. With the increase of the broken pin height, the cooling effectiveness increases. However, the increase of the diameter does not always improve the cooling performance, since the limiting effect of the wall jet. In this study, Case 6 with the largest broken pin always has the best cooling performance, but also the largest flow resistance. In Case 6 temperature is reduced by almost 15 K compared to the baseline, and more areas have relatively higher cooling effectiveness.