Dynamics and Aerodynamics of a Landing Airplane during a High-Speed Lateral Runway Departure

Abstract

A recent accident involved a landing jet airplane that exited the left side of the runway at high speed. The airplane was destroyed by impact forces and fire and all crewmembers on board were fatally injured. This paper describes model development and simulations aimed at generating information for use in failure modes and effects analysis of this runway departure accident. The trajectory of a landing airplane on runway is determined by aerodynamic forces and moments, engine thrust forces and tire forces. Preliminary analysis of the factual evidence indicated that the motion to the left of the accident airplane was driven by tire forces. To support the analysis of this accident, best modeling practices of ground vehicle dynamics and aircraft aerodynamics were combined to develop a model that accurately represented the accident airplane. It was modeled as a wheeled ground vehicle with nonlinear tire characteristics and nonlinear landing gear suspensions. The wheeled ground vehicle was excited by aerodynamic forces and moments and engine thrust forces calculated using available recorded data and airframe manufacturer models. The developed model is accurate even in situations where high speed, high side-to-side vertical load shifts, large sideslip angles, anti-skid braking, and potential wheel lift make airplane models that rely on bicycle-type and other relatively simple tire/runway interaction models inaccurate.