Flexible Fixture Research Of Marine Propeller

Marine propeller is a power device used to propel the ship forward, and it is the most critical parts in shipbuilding industry. With the vigorous development of China’s shipping industry as well as navy’s huge demands for high-performance warships, it’s urgent to solve a problem like quickly manufacture of complex, high-precision marine propeller. It’s very meaningful to design a flexible fixture of marine propeller which can quickly clamp complex, different diameter of propeller hub, different numbers of blades marine propeller and improve marine propeller manufacturing cycle.Currently, there are no studies about flexible fixture design of marine propellers, for this situation, this article details the design of a fast automatic clamping of flexible fixture of marine propellers. The flexible fixture can clamp different diameters of propeller hub, different numbers of blades marine propeller, and it is highly automated.According to the characteristics of marine propeller’s actual production process and the size characteristics of need for clamping’s marine propeller. In this article, based on Inventor virtual assembly environment, we combine theory checking, three-dimensional design software and finite element analysis method to design a flexible fixture of marine propeller.Flexible fixture of marine propeller consists of chassis device, support device, clamping device and protective device. Chassis device is the base of flexible fixture; support device is the main load-bearing member; rotary and clamping mechanism is a key function of flexible fixture, which can clamp different diameter of propeller hub, different numbers of blades marine propeller; protective devices play a protective role for flexible fixture.In order to ensure the reliability and automation level of flexible fixture of marine propellers, we use the finite element analysis software to optimize and validate load capacity and vibration of flexible fixture, and introduce electrical control system design of flexible fixture which makes flexible fixture have higher automation.According feedback from marine propulsion plant and theoretical verification, the design of flexible fixture of marine propeller in this paper can clamp different diameter of propeller hub and different numbers of blades, weighing up to120tons of marine propeller, and it has high degree of automation, effectively shorten the production and processing cycle.