Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2016
The development of more powerful and efficient aero-engines requires ways of increasing the torque transmitted by shafts, whilst also restricting their dimensions and weight. Thin-walled designs can assist this objective, but their use is limited by their torsional collapse behaviour. Of particular interest are conditions leading to buckling instability. The paper investigates the factors influencing this behaviour in order to provide the basis for an improved analysis method applicable to typical gas turbine aero-engine components.
The Riks finite element algorithm has been successfully applied to both plain shafts and shafts with holes. In the former case, it is shown that the perfect cylindrical geometry must be given an initial perturbation in order to give accurate predictions. The perturbation imposed is obtained by scaling the mode shape from an eigenvalue solution so that the maximum radial deformation is a percentage of the wall thickness. The predictions for both plain and holed shafts have been validated experimentally.