Reliability Analysis and Experimental Verification of Landing-Gear Steering Mechanism Considering Environmental Temperature

Abstract

The rack-and-pinion steering mechanism of a nose landing gear, which is applied to a regional turboprop aircraft being developed, is chosen as the research object in this paper. First, the finite element analysis of the key components of the steering mechanism is carried out. Second, the reliability of the steering mechanism is analyzed through combining the dynamic simulation model and the first-order second-moment method based on an artificial neural network. Additionally, the analytical results of reliability and parameter sensitivity show that the steering mechanism has very high reliability, and the turning moment and load torque are the factors that have great influence on the reliability of the steering mechanism. Third, an environmental test system is designed for the reliability test of this nose landing gear. After 300,000 different-temperature environmental tests, the high reliability of the landing-gear steering mechanism is verified. It can be known from the test data that the failure data of the steering mechanism are in accordance with the bathtub curve law in each environmental test, and the temperature has a significant impact on the reliability of the steering mechanism. This paper’s work provides a consolidated test basis and method for analyzing and verifying the performance and reliability of other aircraft landing-gear systems.