Research on a New Aircraft Undercarriage to Prevent Tire Smoking on Landing

The moment at which a wheel of a landing aircraft touches the ground, the wheel meets great resistance to forward motion. As the undercarriage absorbs almost none of this longitudinal impact, the tire begins to smoke, while the oleo strut undergoes spin up and spring back. Most people are unaware that this phenomenon represents the technological limits of current suspensions.

For the wheel to absorb forward impact, it must be given longitudinal stroke. We have created a new type of undercarriage, containing a crank element and adequately gives the longitudinal stroke ^(1),(2).

We clarified the new undercarriage with basic dynamical analysis and computer simulations using an aircraft model with 1 degree of freedom. This simulation showed that when given specific freedom of circular motion, the wheel will accelerate in two stages after landing. Consequently, the sliding friction work on the tire is reduced by a maximum of about 47.4%.