Transient Thermal Analysis, Test Verification and Structural Optimization on the Integrated Flywheel

With the requirement of agility and miniaturization to the aerospace industry, the high-integration concept has been widely applied to design the mechanic-electric products. Taking the flywheel as an example, the mechanism and the control parts are achieved to merge together in recent years. Meanwhile, the maneuvering condition of the flywheel usually induces to higher heat consumption and more rigid thermal reliability on the components. In order to protect the product and reduce the failure risk, it is necessary to analyze the transient thermal distribution of the flywheel and the dissipating paths of the PCB layout by simulation. Additionally, it is feasible to improve the thermal reliability by using structural optimization methods. Based on the statement above, the transient thermal analysis of the integrated flywheel is conducted and the simulation model is established by FEA software. Under the maneuvering conditions, the influence of heat consumption variation on the flywheel's circuit is paid more attention. Temperature-time curves of concerned components are plotted and the location of highest temperature value is pointed out. Then, thermal balancing test is operated to verify the simulation accuracy. It is summarized that the simulation results have a good consistence with the test data, and the computational errors are mainly less than 3^°C. Finally, the structural optimization on the component placement is carried out to improve the thermal reliability of the integrated flywheel.

Keywords: Aerospace industry, Integrated flywheel, Maneuvering condition, Transient thermal analysis, Test verification, Structural optimization.

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