Crashworthiness study of UCAV’s main landing gear using explicit dynamics

Abstract

In the aircraft industry, the ultimate goal in any component’s design is to minimize its weight, maximize its durability, and increasing its life while keeping its overall life cycle costs low. As technology is progressing, UCAVs are gaining more and more prominence as jet powered UCAVs are already taking to skies presenting a myriad of challenges. This is especially true in the case of Landing gears as greater crashworthiness is required in high-speed high payload UCAVs. As jet powered UCAVs have a higher touchdown velocity and thus a higher chance of failure. In this research, a category of unmanned combat aerial vehicles was picked. In that category, a number of reference unmanned combat aerial vehicles were selected to extract the required parameters and dimensions of their main landing gears from literature review and analysis. The main landing gear was then modeled in CAD. Simultaneously loading conditions were defined and loads were determined. The equivalent von mises and maximum principal stresses were obtained from finite element analysis for multiple materials using the finite element package ANSYS. These results were then in turn used to calculate the factor of safety. Furthermore, an impact analysis was carried out in this crashworthiness study using Explicit Dynamics in LS DYNA for the same material. The stress formulations and deformations in impact were highly non-linear and more realistic and accurate than in static structural. The results were then validated.