Preliminary Nose Landing Gear Digital Twin for Damage Detection

Abstract

An increase in aircraft availability and readiness is one of the most desired characteristics of aircraft fleets. Unforeseen failures cause additional expenses and are particularly critical when thinking about combat jets and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). For instance, these systems are used under extreme conditions, and there can be situations where standard maintenance procedures are impractical or unfeasible. Thus, it is important to develop a Health and Usage Monitoring System (HUMS) that relies on diagnostic and prognostic algorithms to minimise maintenance downtime, improve safety and availability, and reduce maintenance costs. In particular, within the realm of aircraft structures, landing gear emerges as one of the most intricate systems, comprising several elements, such as actuators, shock absorbers, and structural components. Therefore, this work aims to develop a preliminary digital twin of a nose landing gear and implement diagnostic algorithms within the framework of the Health and Usage Monitoring System (HUMS). In this context, a digital twin can be used to build a database of signals acquired under healthy and faulty conditions on which damage detection algorithms can be implemented and tested. In particular, two algorithms have been implemented: the first is based on the Root-Mean-Square Error (RMSE), while the second relies on the Mahalanobis distance (MD). The algorithms were tested for three nose landing gear subsystems, namely, the steering system, the retraction/extraction system, and the oleo-pneumatic shock absorber. A comparison is made between the two algorithms using the ROC curve and accuracy, assuming equal weight for missed detections and false alarms. The algorithm that uses the Mahalanobis distance demonstrated superior performance, with a lower false alarm rate and higher accuracy compared to the other algorithm.