Outer casing structure design for the trisection turbine wheel burst of the air turbine starter

by Jin Tang, Yong Zhang, Ge Wang, Weidong Ma

The aviation regulations mandate that high-energy rotor components must possesses adequate containment capabilities. Ensuring the containment of the turbine wheel of the air turbine starter is of paramount importance. In this paper, the design thickness of the containment ring was determined and the containment ring deformation was given. Based on the design thickness and deformation of the containment ring, an outer casing structure design method was proposed by using FEM. Then, two containment tests were conducted for different distances between the containment ring and outer casing to validate the outer casing structure design method. The errors of the containment ring deformation are smaller than 7.5%, and the experimental results of the containment process are in accordance with the simulation, validating correctness of the outer casing structure design method. The containment ring deformation rate with the design thickness T = 10 mm is 115%. A safety margin of 1.05 is designed by considering the uniformity of containment ring deformation and the containment ring assembly error. The results illustrate that the deformed containment ring does not damage the outer casing, when the inner diameter of the outer casing is designed as 1.2 times the outer diameter of the containment ring.