An investigation of an active landing gear system to reduce aircraft vibrations caused by landing impacts and runway excitations

A mathematical model is developed to control aircraft vibrations caused by runway excitation using an active landing gear system. Equations are derived to describe the integrated aircraft-active system. The nonlinear characteristics of the system are modelled and it is actively controlled using a Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) strategy. The performance of this system and its corresponding passive system are compared using numerical simulations. It is demonstrated that the impact loads and the vertical displacement of the aircraft's centre of gravity caused by landing and runway excitations are greatly reduced using the active system, which result in improvements to the performance of the landing gear system, benefits the aircraft's fatigue life, taxiing performance, crew/passenger comfort and reduces requirements on the unevenness of runways.

[1]  Li Yu-ren.  Mathematical Model Research on Aircraft Landing Gear , 2005 .

[2]  Roger M. Goodall,et al.  Active Controls in Ground Transportation — A Review of the State-of-the-Art and Future Potential , 1983 .

[3]  Ting-Whai Lee.  Dynamic Response of Landing Gears on Rough Repaired Runway , 1991 .

[4]  N. S. Currey,et al.  Aircraft landing gear design : principles and practices , 1988 .

[5]  C. Chicone.  Ordinary Differential Equations with Applications , 1999, Texts in Applied Mathematics.

[6]  Gian Luca Ghiringhelli.  Testing of Semiactive Landing Gear Control for a General Aviation Aircraft , 2000 .

[7]  W. G. Price,et al.  Passive–active vibration isolation systems to produce zero or infinite dynamic modulus: theoretical and conceptual design strategies , 2005 .

[8]  Dean Karnopp,et al.  ACTIVE DAMPING IN ROAD VEHICLE SUSPENSION SYSTEMS , 1983 .

[9]  James N. Daniels,et al.  A method for landing gear modeling and simulation with experimental validation , 1996 .

[10]  Stanley M. Shinners,et al.  Control System Design , 2000 .

[11]  I Pritchard Jocelyn.  An Overview of Landing Gear Dynamics , 1999 .

[12]  Shankar P. Bhattacharyya,et al.  Structure and synthesis of PID controllers , 2000 .

[13]  Jia Yu.  TAXIING PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF ACTIVE CONTROL OF LANDING GEAR , 1999 .

[14]  Stephen Wolfram,et al.  The Mathematica Book , 1996 .

[15]  Klaus Koenig.  Aircraft Dynamic Response to Damaged and Repaired Runways. , 1982 .

[16]  Lucas G. Horta,et al.  Modeling and Validation of a Navy A6-Intruder Actively Controlled Landing Gear System , 1999 .

[17]  Robert H. Daugherty,et al.  F-106B airplane active control landing gear drop test performance , 1990 .

[18]  I. Ross,et al.  Application of active control landing gear technology to the A-10 aircraft , 1983 .

[19]  Robert E. Kalaba,et al.  Selected Papers On Mathematical Trends In Control Theory , 1977 .

[20]  Nie Hong.  Dynamic Simulation Model and Parameter Optimization for Landing Gear Impact , 2003 .