Crash and Drop Simulation of Jet Engine Stand
It's nice to know that shipping fixtures have to meet stringent targets for crash, drop and static loading. It would be sort of scary to think of a 3200 kg jet engine breaking lose from its shipping fixture during a 9g crash event and slamming through the bulkhead of a jet liner and into the cockpit. Jet engine stands also have to handle abuse loading due to drops or smashing into walls at 2g loading. Finally, since the complete assembly is often transported over roads, its first natural freqencey needs to be above 10Hz. Historically, these requirements were met by testing and fixture weight was of secondary concern. As we all know, if something is flying, then extra weight is lost revenue. This FEA consulting project took the client's CAD geometry and idealized it down to FEA model that could quickly run implicitly and explicitly using LS-DYNA. The results correlated nicely with the experimental results and indicated that the stand was beautifully designed with little margin left on the table.