Abstract
Aircraft landing gears support the aircraft during ground operations, including take-off, landing impact, taxiing, gate handling and maintenance. In the aeronautical field, the aircraft mass repartition is a significant factor which ensures stability and safety. In order to have the best control of their device, pilots have to know the precise location of the aircraft’s center of gravity, especially during critical phases such as take-off and landing. Hence, it is interesting to develop a mechatronic system able to measure in real time before take-off the mass distributed on each landing gear. This measurement provides the ability for the pilot to avoid mass overload which can have direct impacts on the structural health integrity of the aircraft. This document presents the prototyping of an embedded system which allows determining and informing in real time about the mass distribution within a lightweight aircraft by measuring the pressure inside of each shock absorber. This prototype involves the design of a specific electronic card including an embedded microcontroller, several sensors, a Bluetooth module and an Android interface for smartphones. An application has been developed to directly print on the smartphone screen the aircraft acceleration during the flight and during the landing. It actually allows estimating the pitch and the roll angles of the aircraft during the flight which are computed using the X, Y and Z components of the acceleration. The two angles are represented by the aircraft pictograms.
Highlights
Nowadays during the flight, the landing phase of commercial aircraft is more and more a crucial part of the operational time of the plane structure, and strongly impacts the maintenance schedule
It would possible to determine the aircraft barycenter by estimating the force applied on each landing gear [13,14,15]. The objective of this project is to design an embedded system prototype able to measure the mass on each landing gear using pressure sensors, and to report information in real time to the user
Measurements Results By performing several measurements on the instrumented test bed, the objective is to determine the mass applied to the landing gear according to the pressure inside the chamber, the mass being linked to the force weight of the aircraft in a static mode
Summary
The landing phase of commercial aircraft is more and more a crucial part of the operational time of the plane structure, and strongly impacts the maintenance schedule. The Smart Landing Gear concept has emerged and leads to a new kind of landing equipment [1,2,3,4] This project is part of a mechatronic modeling process elaborated in collaboration with Soben, a French brand which develops landing gears for tourism aircrafts, such as Jodel lightweight aircraft [5]. This kind of aircraft is used in flying club for learning and training, thanks to its small size of only a dozen meters. It is equipped with three landing gears, two at the front and one at the rear
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
