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Engine Mount Design

Andrew Burke and Kyle Kato
Aerospace Engineering
WTHS
4/5/17
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Abstract
The goal of this project was to create an engine mount that would be able to

support a Lycoming O-300 engine, which weighs 250 lb. under normal gravity. We had to

use an already given template and create a frame that would be able to support such a

weight at large g forces like positive six and negative three. The pipe has to have been 1.5

inches in diameter, but we got to chose which material to make the pipe out of.
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Table of Contents

Title Page 1

Abstract 2

Table of Contents 3

Problem Statement 4

Procedure 5

Design 6

Results 8

Conclusion 8
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Problem Statement

The task that we had to complete was to create an engine mount frame that would

be able to hold a 250 lb engine under extreme requirements. The outline for the frame

itself was already made for us; we just had to download it from the pltw website. We had

to use piping that was 1.5 inches in diameter for the frame, although we could chose the

thickness of the pipe walls and the material that the pipes would be made of. The frame

also had to have 3 attachment points that the weight would be distributed through. We

then would have to run the frame through regular gravity, -3 Gs with the total weight of

the engine at this point being 750 lbs. up, and +6 Gs where the total weight of the engine

would be 1500 lbs. down. This task is important to Aerospace engineering because if the

engine is not supported well during flight, it has the capability to through off the fragile

balance in flight, which could result in a crash.

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Procedure

1. First we did an activity on material properties in order to give us a better understanding of

the different types of materials that may be used in aerospace engineering and some that

are not. We tested all the materials strength under tension and compression and got to

look at the weight and cost for each material to give us a better idea on the efficiency for

each material and what jobs the materials would be useful for.
2. The second project was done on Inventor and it taught us all of the frame testing and

modifications you can do on Inventor The project walked us through creating a 3D frame

from a 2D sketch along with how to use some new tools that help construct a proper

frame.
3. The third project we did taught us how to run the structural analysis on the frames once

we had finished a frame. It also showed us how to add forces to the frame and how to

change the angles. In addition, it taught us how to constrain the frame so that it wouldn't

move under the forces that were applied.

4. We then downloaded the frame template to Inventor and decided to use the thicker pipes

made of steel.
5. Once we applied the pipes to the frame to create the struts, we had to cut them down

using mitering and trimming them to faces in order to make the struts fit nicely together,

and so that they didnt stick through the base of the engine mount or the three engine

attachment points.
6. We then restricted the movement of the frame by adding constraints, specifically the

fixed one, on all of the points where the struts touched the engine mount base.
7. Finally we added the forces to the different recreations. For the regular gravity, each

mount point received 83 lbs, for 3 Gs each point received 250 lbs, and for 6 Gs each point

received 500 lbs.

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Design Solution

Our design meets the constraints because the pipe was the right diameter, and we

used the correct base weight for the engine and the correct G levels for the other two

tests. We decided to go with the thicker walled steel pipes, as they would be able to hold

the weight up better than the thinner walled variants. We also chose steel as it is quite

cheap and easy to mold, while also having extremely high tension and compression

strengths. This is extremely important as we do not want the engine moving around in

larger increments like could be possible if we used a lighter metal like aluminum. The

solution worked very well, only moving .003 in at the highest force and the furthest from

the base.

This is the frame under

negative 3 Gs.
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This is the frame under positive 6 Gs.

Frame under normal gravity.

Results

Kyle and I were able to finish the project, as we ran into no problems during the

creation of the frame, nor when we ran the structural analysis. I did make a few mistakes

as far as mis-clicks go when I was trimming the pipes, as if you click the face before the

pipe it will cut the face around the pipe instead of cutting the pipe to the face, which is
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the ideal occurrence. If we did this project again and had more time to complete, I would

try to fix the lines that was the basis for the frame, as some of them did not go to the right

place as was designated by a little cross-hair looking thing showing where they should

have intersected the mount base plate. Since we did not build the frame outline, as we

downloaded it from PLTW, it would have been a long and time consuming process to

make those changes, time that we did not have. This would have probably increased the

strength of the frame as a whole because then the frame would have been in line with

itself, so the force would travel down straight struts. The redrawing of the lines would be

the main edit that would have to be made to make the frame perform better.

Conclusion

In this project we learned how to create frames from inventor drawings; we

learned this in a separate assignment that was used for background for this project. We

also learned how to conduct stress analysis on a frame in inventor. This was also taught

to us through an assignment similar to when we learned how to create frames from

outlines. In addition to this we also learned the properties of many common building

materials, like, steel, aluminum, and wood. This helped us when we decided on a material

to make our frame out of, as we needed something that would be able to sustain those

high forces that were tested. The final thing that we learned in this project was the

importance and usefulness of frame generators to aerospace engineers. They make it

much easier to edit a frame, without having to edit each piece separately, as it is

proportional. This means that when one member is changed, the others change
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proportionally. It also makes it easier to edit the frame to fit the constraints of different

projects, without having to make a frame from scratch.