Optimizing the Design of a Helicopter Rotor Pitch Arm — Lesson 4

There are three different designs provided in this lesson. The first one is the raw design, the second is an engineer's design, and the third is derived from topology optimization. Review the three designs and compare deformation, strain, stress, and other results. Try to answer the questions below when reviewing the model.

(1) What are an engineer's interests in the design of this pitch arm part? Think about the load condition of the pitch arm.

(2) What are the advantages and disadvantages of the three designs?

(3) What could be used as optimization criteria for this design?

Simulation Files

Download the zip file and extract the contents. Go through the Readme file. Follow along with the provided How To Video file. The student version of Ansys simulation software can be downloaded here.