Quantitative Assessment of the Impact of Alternative Manufacturing Methods on Aeroengine Component Lifing Decisions
Journal article, 2017

Static structural aeroengine components are typically designed for full lifetime operation. Under this assumption, efforts to reduce weight in order to improve performance result in structural designs that necessitate expensive manufacturing solutions to ensure high reliability. However, there exist repair techniques that enable the consideration of alternative manufacturing and/or maintenance strategies, in which case different component lifing decisions may be preferable. The research presented in this paper proposes a value-maximizing design framework that models and optimizes component lifing decisions in an aeroengine product-service system context by considering manufacturing and maintenance alternatives. To that end, a lifecycle cost model is developed as a proxy of value creation. Component lifing decisions are made to minimize net present value of lifecycle costs. The impact of manufacturing (represented by associated intial defects) and maintenance strategies (repair and/or replace) on lifing design decisions is quantified by means of failure models whose output is an input to the lifecycle cost model. It is shown that, under different conditions, it may not be prudent to design for full life but rather accept shorter life and then repair or replace the component. This is especially evident if volumetric effects on low cycle fatigue life are taken into account. It is possible that failure rates based on legacy engines do not translate necessarily to weight-optimized components. Such an analysis can play a significant supporting role in engine component design in a product-service system context.

Structural design

Maintenance

Design

Failure

Life cycle costing

Reliability

Manufacturing

Low cycle fatigue

Engines

Weight (Mass)

Author

Benjamin Thomsen

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Michael Kokkolaras

Chalmers, Product and Production Development, Product Development

Tomas Månsson

GKN Aerospace Services

Ola Isaksson

Chalmers, Product and Production Development, Product Development

Journal of Mechanical Design - Transactions of the ASME

1050-0472 (ISSN)

Vol. 139 2 021401

Subject Categories

Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Areas of Advance

Production

DOI

10.1115/1.4034883

More information

Latest update

4/5/2022 6