Finite Element Analysis And Optimization About Propeller Composite Shaft-Hub Connection Structure

In order to get a higher reliability and performance shaft–hub connectionstructure to withstand big impact and vibration of aircraft or ship propeller, a new typeof composite shaft-hub connection structure which was made up of involute splineand cone expansion sleeve was designed on the base of traditional single involutespline shaft-hub connection structure. The design concepts and working principles andstructure features of this new type of composite shaft-hub connection structure werefirstly described in this paper. Then, the physical running-in experiments were carriedout to verify the reliability of this structure.Besides, to give a more precise result to compensate the physical experiments,the finite element analysis about this new type of structure and the traditional structureunder five different working conditions were carried out by using the finite elementanalysis software HYPERMESH and ANSYS. The stress results of these two type ofconnection structures showed that, when the axial force and lateral force of thestructure was small, this new type of connection structure did not show anysuperiority; with the axial force and lateral force constantly increasing, the superioritywas more and more obvious; when the axial force and lateral force reached themaximum, the maximum stress of the composite shaft-hub connection structure is212MPa, much smaller than the maximum stress of the traditional shaft-hub connectionstructure which is367MPa. The simulation results further proved the reliability andsuperiority of this new type of connection structure.Finally, in order to move closer to light-weight principle of aviation products,this paper using the ANSYS optimization module as tool, defining the weight of thestructure as objective, the structure size of cone sleeve as variables, the structuralstrength as constraint, and using sub-problem method and first-order method,provided by ANSYS software, to complete optimizations about this new type ofconnection structure. The optimization result showed that: when the cone angle was13°, and the length of cone sleeve was16.5mm, the weight of whole structure wasthe lightest which was33.9Kg,6.4%less than the original structure.