Dynamic crushing of spacecraft landing gear with crash legs

Abstract

The paper describes spacecraft landing on a landing gear consisting of four crash legs supported by beam struts. The first part is dedicated to verification of low dimension shell finite element model parameters in the MSC Nastran SOL700 software. An elastoplastic crushing test problem of square aluminum specimens with various thickness is simulated. The comparison of simulation results with experimental data shows that the proposed mathematical model provides the error of less than 10% for the specimens with a width-to-thickness ratio C/s > 30. The second part of the paper discusses landing gear legs crushing during vertical landing on a rigid soil. An analysis of the results showed that it is possible to reduce the crash legs mass by 35 % and the landing gear will provide safe landing conditions with a limited level of peak loads acting on the spacecraft. The characteristic features of the crash leg dynamic deformation process open possibilities for further reduction the landing gear weight and design optimization. The paper opens up a new avenue in design of high energy absorption lightweight gear components for the spacecraft landing process.