Effect of double cracks merge on fatigue crack propagation life of engine heat shield

To prevent overheating of the airframe, an aero-engine is often designed to play a role in shielding heat radiation heat shield. Since the thermal protection system used in this paper is active, it is subject to a cold gas pressure load on the outside and a thermal radiation load from the combustion chamber on the inside. Therefore, the working environment of the heat shield is very harsh. Taking the heat shield of an aero-engine as the research object, the finite element method (FEM) is used to analyze the thermal-mechanical coupling (TMC) of the actual working process of the heat shield, and the mechanical quantities such as the thermal stresses and mechanical stresses are comprehensively analyzed. According to the finite element simulation results, two stress concentrations are obtained near the connecting lug, and the stress concentrations are set as the initial crack insertion locations. Using the theory related to linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) and the Forman-Newman-de Koning (FNK) model, the fatigue crack propagation life (FCPL) and its law of the merged double cracks of the engine heat shield are calculated. The results show that the FCPL of the heat shield decreases nonlinearly and the critical crack length decreases linearly under different working conditions. This law applies not only to single cracks but also to merged double cracks. In terms of FCPL, the merged double cracks are lower than the single crack with a maximum life reduction rate of 70.9%.