Research And Simulation Of Steam Catapult System For Aircrafts

As the key equipment of the aircraft carrier for catapult takeoff, the catapult makes all the carrier aircrafts taking off quickly. With it, the aircrafts are more secure when they take off from the aircraft carrier and aircraft carrier's fighting capacity gets further promotion. It is the symbol of the modern aircraft carrier. Today, due to its lighter weight, smaller area and higher energy utilization, the electromagnetic catapult deserves people's attention. It's a new technology for the catapult. Because of the electromagnetic interference and reliability can't be solved, the electromagnetic catapult is not mature. Under this background, the research for steam catapult system has great significance.Steam as working medium for steam catapult,it pushes cylinder and makes the aircrafts getting enough energy for taking off from the aircraft carrier. As a large and complex device,steam catapult composed of many subsystems. At first,the comprehensive analysis is achieved for the American steam catapult. Based on analyzing the whole catapult operation process, for the energy control of the main components of the structure and parameter configuration are analyzed. The energy change process is divided t. into three stages:Steam-filling, Steam-drive and Hydraulic braking.At Steam-filling stage, the steam enters the cylinder, the internal energy is saved; at Steam-drive stage, the internal energy is changed for aircraft's kinetic energy; at Hydraulic braking stage,the kinetic energy is consumed by Hydraulic braking system. With some assumptions,the Mathematical model of catapult is developed. The key components influence on the energy change is found. Then, using AMESim software, the simulation model of steam catapult is developed.By the simulation model of steam catapult, the complete simulation model is running.The simulation results are got when the running time is over. At Steam-filling stage,using simulation results, consider the key parameters how to influence energy change in the whole system. The same way is used into the Steam-drive stage and Hydraulic braking stage.