Stress Analysis on Composite Strut Landing Gear during Rough Landing

Author(s): Sujith Stephen, Nithin S Nair, J. V. Muruga Lal Jeyan, Akhila Rupesh

Abstract: Landing gear is the undercarriage of an aircraft and is typically designed to support the vehicle only at post -flight. A strut is a structural component designed to resist longitudinal compression. Struts provide outwards-facing support in their lengthwise direction, which can be used to keep two other components separate, performing the opposite function of a tie. The need for lightweight, high performance flying machine has today shifted the emphasis from the use of conventional advanced metallic materials to that of composites. At critical situations for both civil and military aircraft, they are needed to be landed on rough landing surfaces which may cause structural damage to the landing strut. For that specified reason, the landing strut made to be very strong, the main parameter that here to be considered is a strength to weight ratio, the strength of the strut should be very high at the same time the weight should be reduced. For that here we have introduced the strut which is made of composite material which satisfies our requirements. The composite material that we have selected here for our fabrication of strut is glass fiber and carbon fabric of alternate layers and also the structural analysis of landing strut is carried out in ANSYS for various impacting conditions with respect to aircraft weight.