MODAL ANALYSIS OF AN AIRCRAFT LANDING GEAR

During the course of an aircraft landing and take-off, the landing gear is subjected to a very massive force that needs to be diverted so that it will not affect the aircraft. Some of the dynamic characteristics that are caused by the force that is subjected to the landing gear are gear walk, shimmy, and brake-induced vibration. Stiffness and dampers are two most important elements of the landing gear to provide smooth motion of the aircraft. However, the data is not available to the public for research purpose. This project is undertaken to establish design data of an aircraft landing gear and study its dynamic characteristics using modal analysis method where the project is carried out using ANSYS software. Modal analysis is basically the study of the dynamic characteristic of a structure when subjected to a vibrating excitation where in this case, the structure to be analysed is the landing gear of the aircraft. In this project, a specific landing gear of an aircraft from Embraer is used as the model for the analysis. After the modelling is done, all the boundary conditions such as the mechanical properties and the connections are properly defined. Modal analysis is then performed in order to obtain the deformations, mode shapes, and the natural frequencies of the landing gear. From the result, five different mode shapes are taken into account and natural frequencies of the mode shapes are in the range of 129 – 379 Hz. The obtained result is discussed and compared to the closest possible research for its validity and it can be concluded that the project is successful where the mode shapes and natural frequencies that are obtained have the same pattern as the result in other researches.