Publication Date
2014
Document Type
Dissertation
Committee Members
Edward Alyanak (Committee Member), Ha-rok Bae (Committee Member), Ramana Grandhi (Advisor), Jack Mcnamara (Committee Member), Scott Thomas (Committee Member)
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Abstract
The design of structures subjected to elevated temperature environments has long been an important area of study in the aerospace industry. This is especially true in the modern day, where new problems related to embedded engine aircraft and high temperature exhaust-washed structures present new structural design challenges not found in past applications. In this work, the response of a class of thermal structures whose responses are characterized by significant amounts of restrained expansion, to which exhaust-washed structures belong, are studied. To address the complex design challenges that become evident in these investigations, structural topology optimization is applied due to its unique ability to identify optimal material layout. Since conventional methods for topology optimization fail to generate effective designs in the presence of thermoelastic effects, new formulations for thermoelastic topology optimization are demonstrated. These include techniques for addressing the amount of reaction loading generated by a structural concept and methods for incorporating stress-based design criteria in topology optimization problems with design-dependent thermal loading. When taken together, the developments in this work provide a design technique in which stresses can be directly treated in thermal structures by identifying the proper arrangement of structural components in a thermal environment.
Page Count
232
Department or Program
Ph.D. in Engineering
Year Degree Awarded
2014
Copyright
Copyright 2014, some rights reserved. My ETD may be copied and distributed only for non-commercial purposes and may not be modified. All use must give me credit as the original author.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
