Parametric Analysis on Landing Gear Strut Friction of Light Aircraft for Touchdown Performance

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to obtain the strut friction–touchdown performance relation for designing the parameters involving the strut friction of the landing gear in a light aircraft. The numerical model of the landing gear is validated by drop test of single half-axle landing gear, which is used to obtain the energy absorption properties of strut friction in the landing process. Parametric studies are conducted using the response surface method. Based on the design of the experiment results and response surface functions, the sensitivity analysis of the design variables is implemented. Furthermore, a multi-objective optimization is carried out for good touchdown performance. The results show that the proportion of energy absorption of friction load accounts for more than 35% of the total landing impact energy. The response surface model characterizes well for the landing response, with a minimum fitting accuracy of 99.52%. The most sensitive variables for the four landing responses are the lower bearing width and the wheel moment of inertia. Moreover, the max overloading of sprung mass in LC-1 decreases by 4.84% after design optimization, which illustrates that the method of analysis and optimization on the strut friction of landing gear is efficient for improving the aircraft touchdown performance.