Abstract
A propulsion and lift shafting system in an air cushion vehicle is flexible multi-elements system which consists of two aeroderivative gas turbines with own bevel gears, four stage lift fan reduction gear, two stage propulsion reduction gear air propellers and high capacity of lifting fans. In addition, the system includes the multi-branched shafting with multi-gas turbine engines and thin walled shaft with flexible coupling. Such a branched shafting system has very intricate vibrating characteristics and especially, the thin walled shaft with flexible couplings can lower the torsional natural frequencies of shafting system to the extent that causes a resonance in the range of operating revolution. In this study, to evaluate vibrational characteristics some analytical methods for the propulsion and lift shafting system are studied. The analysis, including natural frequencies and mode shapes, for five operation cases of the system is conducted using ANSYS code with a equivalent mass-elastic model.