22nd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Harrogate, UK, 28 August - 1st September, 2000
Paper ICAS 2000-4.11.2

A PARAMETRIC STUDY OF AIRCRAFT LANDING-IMPACT WITH EMPHASIS ON NOSE-GEAR LANDING DESIGN CONDITIONS

D. H. Chester
Department 4441, Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd., Ben-Gurion International Airport, Israel.

Keywords: aircraft motion, equivalent mass, landing-impact, landing gear, load conditions, nose gear

A parametric approach to simulation of landing impact, with pitching and heaving degrees of freedom of the aircraft motion, has been used to determine the response of the main and nose gears. Compared to each gear's independent behavior, there are important differences in the landing conditions and in the resulting vertical loads and displacements when these aircraft motions are included. For main gears, the maximum vertical loads are almost linearly dependent on the sinking speed but there is some variation in the proportion of kinetic energy absorbed. For nose gears no similarity validity exists with single gear results. Correlation with aircraft sinking speed is absent and the response is sensitive to the values of initial pitch angle and pitch inertia. This is due to the equivalent mass at this location being greatly affected by these input quantities and by the aircraft scale.

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