Abstract
The landing gear of an aircraft serves to mitigate the vibration and impact forces transmitted from the ground to the fuselage. This paper addresses magneto-rheological (MR) damper landing gear, which provides high shock absorption efficiency and excellent stability in various landing conditions by adjusting the damping force using external magnetic field intensity. The performance and stability of an MR damper was verified through numerical simulations and drop tests that satisfied aviation regulations for aircraft landing gear. In this study, a prototype MR damper landing gear, a drop test jig, and a two-degree-of-freedom model were developed to verify the performance of the MR damper, with real-time control, for light aircraft landing gear. Two semi-active control algorithms, skyhook control and hybrid control, were applied to the MR damper landing gear. The drop tests were carried out under multiple conditions, and the results were compared with numerical simulations based on the mathematical model. It was experimentally verified that as the shock absorption efficiency increased, the landing gear’s cushioning performance significantly improved by 17.9% over the efficiency achieved with existing passive damping.
Highlights
An aircraft’s landing gear supports its fuselage on the ground and mitigates the vibration and shock transmitted to the fuselage during landing and taxiing [1,2,3,4]
We investigated the first and second peak changes on the ground reaction force–stroke diagram, depending on the sprung mass and sink speed when the MR damper landing gear operated passively, and we confirmed that the results of the drop test simulations and experiments tended to be the same
When the sprung mass changed, the maximum air force acting on the landing gear changed, resulting in a change in the second peak on the ground reaction force–stroke diagram
Summary
An aircraft’s landing gear supports its fuselage on the ground and mitigates the vibration and shock transmitted to the fuselage during landing and taxiing [1,2,3,4]. Experiments are performed with a landing gear prototype and a drop test jig [24]; which are designed to satisfy test conditions and accommodate the sensors required for the semi-active control system. The performance of the MR damper landing gear can be verified by investigating the characteristics of the MR damper using the drop test jig with real-time control over the damper [25,26]. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no studies have been published that experimentally verify the performance of an MR damper landing gear configuration in terms of shock absorption efficiency, with a prototype, in a drop test environment. Drop test experiments were conducted on various conditions of the sprung mass and sink speed with a real-time control system, and this experimentally verified that the MR damper landing gear’s performance significantly improved when the semi-active control algorithms were applied.
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