Design and Testing of a Crashworthy Landing Gear

Abstract

The development of a crashworthy landing gear is presented based on the civil regulations and the military specifications. For this, two representative crashworthy requirements are applied to helicopter landing gear design: the nose gear is designed to collapse in a controlled manner so that it does not penetrate the cabin and cause secondary hazards, and the main gear has to absorb energy as much as possible in crash case to decelerate the aircraft. To satisfy the requirements, the collapse mechanism triggered by shear-pin failure and the shock absorber using blow-off valve (BOV) is implemented in the nose and main gear, respectively. The crash performance of landing gear is demonstrated by drop tests. In the tests, performance data such as ground reaction loads and shock absorber stroke are measured and crash behaviors are recorded by high-speed camera. The test data show a good agreement with the prediction by simulation model, which proves the validity of the design and analysis.