Multidisciplinary Optimization of Helicopter Gearbox Housing Structural Vibration Based on ARSM

A comprehensive numerical method to optimize a helicopter gearbox housing vibration characteristic is presented. Thicknesses of all the shells are considered to be design variables. The variables that have more effect to the responses than others are found by sensitivity analysis through orthogonal experiment, decreasing computational cost and improving the efficiency. An adaptive response surface method is applied to maximize the first-order natural frequency with the constraint of stress and mass to reduce structural vibration and satisfy strength and mass requirements at the same time, which is a multidisciplinary optimization problem. The results show that the maximum nodal displacement frequency response is lessened 58% and the maximum element stress is 29% less than the original housing structure.