Multi-pipe Routing in Bundles for Aero-engine using MOPSO

Abstract

Complex equipment such as aero-engine commonly contains a number of pipes. Appropriately routing these pipes poses a considerable challenge to complex product developments. In some cases, pipes need to be paved in bundles to save space, improve stability and obtain artistic configurations. In this paper, a bundled pipe routing method for aero-engine based on Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO) is presented. Firstly, space modeling and problem description are introduced. Subsequently, the individual encoding for bundled routing is designed, where the nodes of a reference pipe is selected as particle encoding, and the coordinates of other pipe nodes are obtained according to geometrical constraints such as pipe spacing and diameters. Further, objective function formulation and constraint processing method are given. By using MOPSO, the Pareto set in which pipes are paved in bundles on routing layers are solved. Finally, some routing examples on a simplified CAD piping model are performed to demonstrate the feasibility of the presented method.