Dr Prakash Jadhav, Professor and Head, Department of Mechanical Engineering at SRM University-AP has published a chapter titled “Design Methodologies for Composite Structures in Aircraft Engines” in the book Advanced composites in aerospace engineering applications, Feb 2022, ISBN 978-3-030-88191-7, Springer.
Abstract of the book chapter
Recently there have been many successful attempts to implement the use of fibre-reinforced composite structures in commercial aircraft engines. The author has been part of these efforts while working in the aviation industry. This article describes these efforts to design, analyze, manufacture, and implement the composite structures inside the low-pressure and low-temperature zones of the engine. Very innovative out-of-the-box design methodologies were used to design these components. These efforts elaborate on the design, optimization, and improvement of the composite fan blade, the composite fan platform, and the composite booster blade inside the engine. It focuses on structural design, aerodynamic efficiency, and specific fuel consumption improvement efforts along with the usual reduction of weight targets. This work successfully demonstrates the systematic steps in the design and implementation like preliminary coupon-level simulations, coupon-level manufacturing, coupon/prototype testing, and final part-level simulations followed by part tests.
The target readers for the book are all engineers, professionals and researchers from the aerospace field. Dr Prakash Jadhav’s future research plan is to continue to develop new methodologies to implement more composites into the aerospace industry. The book chapter will be extremely useful for engineers working on the design of composite structures for aerospace applications.