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Aerospace
Special Issues
Structural Strength, Life Reliability and Design Optimization of Aircraft Engines
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Structural Strength, Life Reliability and Design Optimization of Aircraft Engines

A special issue of Aerospace (ISSN 2226-4310). This special issue belongs to the section "Aeronautics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2026 | Viewed by 1729

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Xi Liu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Energy and Power Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China
Interests: uncertainty quantification; reliability analysis; topology optimization
Dr. Cheng Yan

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Aerospace Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China
Interests: aircraft engine structural strength; structural topology optimization design; multidisciplinary design optimization

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The structural integrity and reliability of aircraft engines are fundamental to ensuring flight safety, operational efficiency, and lifetime sustainability. With the increasing complexity of modern aero-engines and their extreme service environments, conventional deterministic design approaches are no longer sufficient to meet the stringent demands of performance, durability, and risk control. This Special Issue aims to provide a comprehensive forum for the dissemination of recent advances in structural strength analysis, life reliability assessment, and optimization methodologies tailored to aircraft engine systems.

We particularly welcome contributions that address the modeling and prediction of structural failure mechanisms under thermo-mechanical loading, incorporating uncertainty quantification and probabilistic methods into reliability-based design. Studies leveraging surrogate modeling, correlation analysis, and advanced optimization algorithms—such as topology optimization and multi-disciplinary design optimization (MDO)—are of strong interest. The integration of computational efficiency with high-fidelity physics-based models and the development of robust, uncertainty-aware design frameworks will be central themes of this issue.

By fostering a cross-disciplinary dialog between structural mechanics, reliability engineering, and design optimization, this Special Issue seeks to advance the theoretical foundations and practical applications of reliable and efficient aero-engine design.

Dr. Xi Liu
Dr. Cheng Yan
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Aerospace is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • lifetime prediction
  • structural design
  • uncertainty quantification
  • reliability evaluation
  • reliability design
  • optimization algorithm
  • topology optimization
  • multi-disciplinary design optimization
  • surrogate model
  • correlation analysis

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

27 pages, 8558 KB  
Article
Partitioned Topology Optimization of Aero-Engine Rear Cooling Plate Based on Multi-Feature K-Means Algorithm
by Huanhuan Chen, Jianqiang Jiang, Lizhang Zhang, Dong Mi, Shumin Ai and Haowei Guo
Aerospace 2026, 13(5), 394; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace13050394 - 22 Apr 2026
Viewed by 379
Abstract
As a core load-bearing component, the aero-engine rear cooling plate requires its design to simultaneously meet strength requirements and lightweight indicators. The topology optimization method considering stress constraints is the core technical path to achieve this goal, but it suffers from insufficient control [...] Read more.
As a core load-bearing component, the aero-engine rear cooling plate requires its design to simultaneously meet strength requirements and lightweight indicators. The topology optimization method considering stress constraints is the core technical path to achieve this goal, but it suffers from insufficient control precision in key areas, easily leading to material redundancy. To address this issue, a partitioned topology optimization method based on the multi-feature K-means algorithm is proposed. First, by integrating multi-dimensional features including element stress, physical density, and spatial position, an innovative multi-feature K-means algorithm is employed to realize dynamic adaptive partitioning during the optimization process. Secondly, combined with the p-norm method for partitioned stress aggregation, a precise prediction and control method for partitioned stress is adopted to refine stress constraints. Thirdly, a topology optimization model of the rear cooling plate with multi-feature partitioned stress constraints is constructed, and the adjoint method is used to solve the stress sensitivities under centrifugal loads. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified using the rear cooling plate model. The rear cooling plate is discretized with 0.5 mm 2D axisymmetric finite elements, the filter radius is 4 mm, and the Method of Moving Asymptotes (MMA) is employed for the solution. The mass fraction of the finally optimized rear cooling plate structure is 0.157, which is 13.7% lower than that obtained by the global stress constraint method and 11.3% lower than that obtained by the topology optimization method considering both the geometric partitioned stress constraints and global stress constraints. The proposed method provides a new approach for the lightweight design of the aero-engine rear cooling plate. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Strength, Life Reliability and Design Optimization of Aircraft Engines)
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14 pages, 537 KB  
Article
An Improved Sample-Aggregation Method for Weibull Estimation of Bushing Maximum Friction Torque Under Small-Sample Conditions
by Shenglei Liu, Liqiang Zhang and Liyang Xie
Aerospace 2026, 13(4), 342; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace13040342 - 6 Apr 2026
Viewed by 359
Abstract
This study addresses the instability of statistical modeling for small-sample maximum friction torque data under multiple temperature conditions. Within the Weibull distribution framework, a sample-aggregation method is proposed, and a unified modeling scheme separating central tendency from dispersion structure is established. This approach [...] Read more.
This study addresses the instability of statistical modeling for small-sample maximum friction torque data under multiple temperature conditions. Within the Weibull distribution framework, a sample-aggregation method is proposed, and a unified modeling scheme separating central tendency from dispersion structure is established. This approach enables equivalent aggregation of data across different temperature levels while preserving structural consistency, thereby improving parameter estimation stability and statistical efficiency. To overcome the tendency of single-criterion optimization to fall into local optima under small-sample conditions, a secondary identification criterion combining residual minimization with a Levene-based statistical consistency test is introduced, and a dual-level search strategy is used to obtain a more robust global optimal solution. The parameter estimation results indicate that direct estimation based on small samples produces unstable parameters, with the coefficient of variation of the shape parameter reaching approximately 7.4%. In contrast, the sample-aggregation method shows that the scale parameter increases with temperature, while the location parameter first decreases and then increases due to the combined influence of central tendency and dispersion. The parameters obtained by the aggregation method exhibit more stable and regular variation trends with temperature. The results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly improves parameter stability and statistical efficiency for small-sample maximum friction torque data and provides a practical statistical modeling approach for multi-condition small-sample engineering data. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Strength, Life Reliability and Design Optimization of Aircraft Engines)
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18 pages, 4967 KB  
Article
An Analytical Model for High-Velocity Impacts of Flaky Projectile on Woven Composite Plates
by Chao Hang, Xiaochuan Liu, Yonghui Chen and Tao Suo
Aerospace 2026, 13(2), 126; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace13020126 - 28 Jan 2026
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 389
Abstract
Three-dimensional (3D) woven composites have good impact resistance and are expected to become the fan casing material for the next generation of turbofan engines. Conducting research on the performance of woven composite plates under high-velocity impact of flaky projectiles is of great significance [...] Read more.
Three-dimensional (3D) woven composites have good impact resistance and are expected to become the fan casing material for the next generation of turbofan engines. Conducting research on the performance of woven composite plates under high-velocity impact of flaky projectiles is of great significance for the containment design of the fan casing. Based on the principle of energy conservation, an analytical model for the high-velocity impact of flaky projectiles on carbon fiber woven composite plates was established for three typical failure modes: shear plugging, fiber failure, and momentum transfer. A segmented solution method combining analytical and numerical calculations was developed for the model. The critical penetration velocity of the plate obtained by the analytical method at different roll angles of the projectile is in good agreement with the experimental results, which verifies the accuracy of the analytical model. Moreover, the analytical results indicate that the critical penetration velocity of the plate increases first and then decreases with the roll angle of the projectile. Further energy conversion analysis points out that shear plugging is the main form of energy dissipation for woven composite plates, and the energy dissipation of shear plugging at a roll angle of 30° is higher than that at 0° and 60°. This elucidates the mechanism by which the roll angle of the projectile affects the critical penetration velocity of the plate from the perspective of energy dissipation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Strength, Life Reliability and Design Optimization of Aircraft Engines)
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