Multidisciplinary Structural Optimization of Low-Pyroshock Separation Nuts for Aerospace

Abstract

This paper presents a multidisciplinary structural optimization approach to design separation nuts with low-level pyroshock responses for aerospace. A parametric modeling method is developed to automatically construct a multibody finite element model for separation nuts according to the predefined structural parameters. A new explicit dynamics analysis workflow tailored to separation nuts is proposed to simulate the pyroshock environment efficiently. Based on a backpropagation neuron network technique, certain surrogate models are established to describe the equivalence relationship between the structural parameters and the multidisciplinary structural responses including the pyroshock, the bending stiffness, and the structural weight. Finally, a pyroshock minimization problem with the constraints of structural weight and bending stiffness is solved by using a genetic algorithm, resulting in an optimized low-pyroshock separation nut design. The comparison between the optimized structure and a reference structure shows the effectiveness of the proposed approach.