The Dynamic Characteristics of a non-linear main landing gear system of an aircraft during landing

The landing gear plays a very important role during landing by absorbing the high impact energy of the aircraft. The main landing gear absorbs the bulk of the load to reduce the load experienced by both the aircraft fuselage and the nose landing gear. In this paper, a mathematical approach is used to extract the dynamic characteristics of the system. A two-degree of freedom mathematical model of the main landing gear is developed. This model is used to derive the dynamic equations of the landing gear system and to study the behaviour of main landing gear during main gear and nose gear touchdown conditions. The non-linear stiffness and damping co-efficient in an Oleo-Pneumatic shock absorber are integrated into the system to achieve a more accurate response of the system. The response of this system is established by adopting a complex modal analysis approach to account for the non-classical damping exhibited by the system. The obtained spring force, damping force and responses are reported. This work provides an alternative approach using complex modal analysis to obtain results for complex systems exhibiting non-linear characteristics.