Automatic Preliminary Assessment of the Mechanical Response of LPT stages

The aim of this thesis work is the development of a tool (PRIME) able to make quick assessments of the mechanical response of a Low Pressure Turbine stage of aeronautical engines. It places itself in the preliminary design loops, giving aeromechanical feedback during the aerodynamic design, thus leading to an optimization process which includes both disciplines. The usual iterations between aerodynamic and aeromechanical design are reduced, allowing for a time effective process and a reduction of possible misunderstanding between the teams. The tool receives as inputs aerodynamic data, from which it generates the 3D airfoil, then it completes the CAD adding consistent inner and outer elements. The geometry is handled in the Unigraphics NX environment. Afterwards a Finite Elements model is created in Ansys Workbench. Here two different analyses can be run: the static analysis and the pre-stressed modal analysis. The latter provides the inputs to perform a Flutter analysis and to study the forced response. The focus of this work is placed in the setup and validation of the FE models for the static analysis in Ansys Workbench. The results obtained with this software must be consistent with the ones obtained with msc NASTRAN, where the legacy of AvioAero is built. Furthermore an already existing tool for the forced response analysis has been automatized in order to fi t in the PRIME process.