Structural Analysis of the Nose Landing Gear of a Fighter Aircraft

Abstract

The landing gear, which is one of the most important mechanical systems in aircraft, is the structure that is exposed to landing loads, one of the most important and critical loads that the aircraft is exposed to throughout its life cycle. In addition to the fact that the landing gear system must have high strength to these loads, long life, high performance, low volume, minimum weight, and low cost are important criteria. For this purpose, the optimum design is created by making a structural analysis using the landing gear finite element method. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the strength criteria by performing the structural analysis of the nose landing gear of a fighter aircraft. For the design, the most critical static and dynamic loads in the landing condition were calculated and applied as vertical, side, and drag forces. The displacement and stress values obtained as the final result by using metallic materials such as Aluminum 7075 T6 alloy, Titanium Ti-6Al-4V alloy, PH13-8Mo, 300M Steel, SAE 1035, and AISI 4340 steel alloy in the nose landing gear fork, torque links, side stay arms, and main strut were compared. The safety of the parts was examined from the results of the analysis. CAD drawings were made using Siemens NX and ANSYS SpaceClaim program. Structural analysis was applied with the ANSYS Workbench program, which uses the finite element method.