Aeronautical gearboxes housing optimization for additive manufacturing

This master thesis has the goal to test a new structural optimization method, to redesign an aeronautical Gearbox, in order to make it suitable for Additive Manufacturing production. In particular way we will focus on the TGB (Transfer Gearbox) which is the part that transfer mechanical motion from compressor shaft to the auxiliary gearbox where are placed the alternators to transform mechanical energy into electrical one. During the optimization process we will try however to reduce the component weight, taking into account all the constraints. The Optimization method chosen for this work is made available by Altair Hyperworks and it is the Free Size Optimization. In the future the results of this optimization could be processed once again using the Free Shape Optimization to smooth better the geometry, but the first objective is to understand if the Free Size could be suitable for our purpose. In the course of this master thesis work we will first see shortly what is AM and it’s shapes, after we will see what is the structural optimization and at least how to use it to optimize an aeronautical gearbox housing for AM. Unfortunately the time needed for this type of exploration work is bigger then the time at my disposal to write this thesis and, for this reason, will be some future tasks that has to be pursue in order to do a complete job. This thesis will be so the first part of a major work and for that we will not be able to treat all the cases or to obtain a fully ready geometry for the printing process, but we will show how to achieve the major objective in this process leaving the finishing for the future.