Turbine

The turbine exhaust case and tail cone are integral parts of an aero engine. The casing is used to mount the engine onto the aircraft wing.

GTO were asked to develop the design of the casing when subjected to Fan Blade Out (FBO) conditions whilst keeping within the maximum mass allowed.


The acceptance criteria were:

That the casing should contain a FBO occurrence and that is there should be no ultimate failure of the lugs and casing.

The natural frequencies of the tail cone should be above an accepted allowable to avoid idle drumming of the cone.
GTO developed a parametric cyclic symmetric shell model of the casings forward cone and optimised it for maximum linear buckling capacity for a minimum mass.

This optimised design was used to create a solid model of the casing which was subjected to the FBO loads. A linear analysis with inertia relief quickly revealed that stresses significantly exceeded yield and that a non-linear buckling analysis was necessary to evaluate the levels of plastic strain.

GTO successfully optimised and verified the design of the Turbine Exhaust Case and Tail Cone.