Case Study: Connecticut Reserve Technologies achieves rapid, accurate microturbine ceramic-rotor surface characterization and reliability mapping with ANSYS

Connecticut Reserve Technologies - Customer Case Study

Connecticut Reserve Technologies, a distributed electrical power systems firm, needed to predict the reliability of silicon nitride microturbine rotors whose fracture strength varies widely with surface treatment. The challenge was to establish Weibull distribution metrics tied to specific rotor surfaces and to scale component-level reliability to standard ceramic bend-bar specimens so material suppliers and designers could set clear performance requirements. To do this, CRT relied on ANSYS (ANSYS® Structural™ and ANSYS Parametric Design Language) as the analysis platform.

Using ANSYS APDL to identify finished surfaces, extract stress fields and map them to element surfaces, ANSYS was integrated with the CARES and CRT WeibPar algorithms to compute component reliability and probability of failure. The ANSYS-enabled workflow produced rapid material characterization maps, turning a previously serial update process into a parallel design-and-materials iteration; this accelerated generation of material requirements, better guided ceramic development goals, and increased designers’ confidence and lifing rate using ANSYS.

Connecticut Reserve Technologies

A.A. Wereszczak

Senior Staff Scientist