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F16 Landing Gear Simulation for Structural and Reliability Analyses

H.W. Ng*, G.K. Neo, X. W. Xie and W.X. Chu
Nanyang Technological University
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
50, Nanyang Avenue
Singapore 639798

*Corresponding author email: mhwng@ntu.edu.sg

Abstract

The minor deformations on an aircraft landing gear and the associated wheel well doors
structures due to wear and tear over time, and various loadings on them has been studied
to determine their effects on landing gear operation reliability. The aircraft landing gear
system uses micro-switches to feedback the exact position of the parts and they operate
with close tolerances. Minor deformations on the landing gear and its associated wheel
doors structures may cause small misalignment between the moving parts due to various
aerodynamic loadings. These deflections are large enough to affect the micro-switches in
flight but not easily detectable on ground during troubleshooting.

The structural components of the landing gears consists of: shock struts, drag and side
stays, actuator mechanisms, various linkages and pivot pins, up or down locks and
position sensors for cockpit indications. The wheel well and doors also have a large
number of parts such as alignment pins, hinges, locking mechanisms at points of
attachment and position sensors. These parts experiences cyclic and sometimes extreme
loads during service. Over time, due to in service wear and distortions, the functional
tolerances of critical pins, bushings and actuators degrade to affect the operability of the
landing gear mechanisms before scheduled overhaul are due.

Finite Element Method (FEM) and Hydraulic Simulation software together have the
capability to analyse localized detailed stresses and simulate possible small combined
relative movements of the various mechanisms due to wear and in service loadings of
landing gear components. This presentation describes the application of modeling and
analyses for in-service conditions to predict localized high stress areas or wear hot
spots and distortion modes of the landing gear and its associated wheel well doors
components.

A highly detailed CAD model of the structures of the F-16 port side main landing gear,
wheel well and doors have been constructed. The applicable loads besides the various
aerodynamic loads include air load, inertia loading due to mechanism acceleration and
deceleration and gyroscopic loads and induced by landing gear extension and retraction.
The loading cases also including vertical reaction landing loads and brake loads are
considered.


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1. Introduction

The landing gear system is one of the aircraft most critical systems allowing it to taxi,
take off and land. A failure of the landing gear may result in aircraft on ground (AOG),
loss of mission and/or aircraft and endangerment of flight crew. All of the
aforementioned will also result in loss of operational capability. The F16 landing gear
configuration has a multitude of joints to enable it to be retracted into the fuselage wheel
well. The large number of joints necessitated more maintenance compared to other types
of landing gear. According to the past defect trends, common defects found include those
due to tolerance such as rigging problems, wear and tear in joints and tire worn to limit
and excessive stress causing shearing of bolt. Of this, a portion of the defects are related
to the main landing gear system looseness in pins and bushings of joints. It is therefore
essential to investigate the causes of the defects in the joints to improve the availability of
the aircraft and solve some of its reliability issues. Although the F16 landing gear is the
focus of the article, it is to an extent for illustrative purpose only, other aircraft are
equally amenable to the analysis methodology described.


2. Analysis Methodology

The main objectives of the methodology are:

2.1. Analyse the global stresses on a large model and extract local loads at bearings
for the load cases:
(i) aerodynamic drag due to relative air speed during take off and landing.
(ii) inertia force due to retraction or extending mass of gear through 90
o
within
a time of 6 seconds.
(iii) gyroscopic force, caused by rotating wheel swiveled through 90
o
to lie flat
in the wheel well. Although a prebrake is often applied to stop wheel
turning after takeoff, it takes a few seconds to be activated.
(iv) vertical reaction force, a landing load factor Nz of 3 was used.
(v) side reaction force caused by taxiing around a curve.
(vi) spin up force due to inertia when wheel spin up upon landing.

The operational cycles of the landing gear consists of the following phases:
Phase 1: Landing approach
Phase 2: Touchdown
Phase 3: Taxiing roll
Phase 4: Taxiing turn
Phase 5: Take-off
Each phase is a combination of the load cases selected from above. One of the most
severe phase encountered is during landing touch down which involves cases (i), (v)
and (vii). A landing gear system is designed comprehensively to withstand these
loads (refs. 1 and 2) and have adequate structural capacity for all combinations of
loads.

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2.2. Analyse the inertia forces due to actuator actions during retraction and extension
for the local contact stress analysis at the connections at the ends of the actuator.
This is a more precise analysis including interaction with the hydraulic system.

2.3. Analyse the local stresses due to contact between the bushes and internal pins.

2.4. Determine the deformation of the main landing gear components under various
loadings.

2.5. Determine the possible wear characteristics on the critical areas under various
loadings.


3. Landing Gear Description

The landing gear system of the F-16 is fuselage-mounted, tricycle-type and retractable.
The fuselage attachment is simply through three hard points, two main points carry in-
line hinging allowing the landing gear to swing outward i.e. sideways from the side of the
fuselage. The third point located forward carry the drag stay connection. The wheel path
swing forward and is swiveled to horizontally fit flat inside the fuselage. (An animation
is shown in the presentation). Figure 1 (ref. 3) illustrates the main components of the
main landing gear.

A hydraulic system provide hydraulic power for normal operation of the landing gear,
which include extension and retraction, landing gear door opening and closing, braking,
and nose wheel steering. The main landing gear and door subsystem has standard
landing gear structures on both sides of the fuselage. The main gear doors cover the
wheel wells during flight and are hydraulically opened and closed.


Figure 1: Main landing gear components (ref 3).

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The tension strut assembly consists of the tension strut, the axle fitting, wheel positioning
collar and link. The drag brace assembly is a folding stay with internal locking
mechanism at the folding joint. It consists of an upper drag brace, a lower drag brace, and
a downlock mechanism. It connects to the tension strut wheel positioning collar at the
lower end. The upper drag brace connects to the aircraft structure in the forward part of
the wheel well. It houses the downlock actuator and the toggle assembly.


4. Finite Element Analyses

Finite element analysis is divided into two phases; namely a global phase and local phase.
The global phase analyses the entire landing gear subjected to the above mentioned
loading cases (i) to (v). The purpose of the global phase is to extract forces at the joints
to be later applied to the more finely meshed local component level i.e. the local phase.
Also, the global phase allows for the visualization of the motion during the extraction and
retraction. In this presentation, the wheel well structure and the attached doors are not
considered. They will be carried out in future to determine the in-flight deflections when
they are subjected to air and dynamic loads.

4.1. Motion Model of Landing Gear

The main structural components of the main landing gear and wheel well are drawn using
Pro-Engineer Wildfire 2.0 Software (ref.4). The main structural components include
main landing gear wheel well, main landing gear wheel well door, tension strut, shock
strut, upper and lower drag brace, axle, toggle, centrelink, wheel, link, collar, and
bushing. A detailed CAD drawing of the main landing gear, and wheel well and door
are as shown in figure 2 and 3. The file is imported in Visual Nastran which performed
the motion simulation and finite element analysis. The motion file is shown in the
presentation. Figures 4 to 5 shows various positions during the motion of the landing
gear and wheel well. For the motion model to work well, as is clearly shown in the
animation, all the linkages and tolerance have been accurately set.


Figure 2: CAD solid model of detached landing gear wheel well door.
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Figure 3: Solid models for the wheel well and extended main landing gear .

Figure 4. Motion model showing the landing gear fully retracted into wheel well, note
the wheel swivel.
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MLG in fully extended state Retraction of MLG

MLG is fully retracted state Closing of Wheel well door


MLG fully retracted and wheel well door fully closed

Figure 5. Stopped motion screen shots at different points in the retraction cycle.


4.2. Global Stress Analysis of Complete Landing Gear

The final mesh of the FE model is shown in figure 6. A relatively crude mesh is applied
to the solid model in order to reduce computational times. Furthermore, the purpose of
the global model is not to obtained accurate stresses but to derive the joint forces. It is
noted that despite this the stresses along the struts and stays are relatively accurate. The
joint forces are later extracted to be input into refined local component models which will
be elaborated in the next section to obtain the local contact stresses. For this phase of the
analysis, the landing gear is separately analysed by removing from the wheel well and the
three attachment hard points were rigidly fixed. Also all the joints are made rigid by
connecting pin to bush surfaces. Also, the landing gear is frozen into the fully extended
down and locked position.

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Figure 6: Mesh of the main landing gear

4.3. Local Contact Stress Model

The contact stresses in pins and bushings are dependent on the joint geometry and
local forces applied. The local models are finite element models created for all joints
which consisted of the bush and pin rolling contact parts (ref 5). These were aimed at
obtaining the high contact stresses during load transfer between the landing gear
structures during various phases of operation. It is intended in this presentation to
describe one such joint at the connection between the gear actuator and the tension
strut. In creating this model, contact elements were used to model the contact
between the pin and bush. By imposing symmetry condition, the joint is reduced to a
half two dimensional model shown in figure 7, using finely meshed 2D solid
elements. The maximum force was applied to the lower collar of the bush assembly
while the pin was restrained by spring elements representing the stiffness of the pin
under 3 point loading. The contact elements connect the lower semicircular surfaces
of the bush and pin. Preliminary results are presented in section 6 because this work
is currently in progress.

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Figure 7: The half two dimensional model of the bush to collar joint between gear
actuator and tension strut pin. Note: the structure undeformed shape is shown in
white.


5. Hydraulic flow modeling

Hydraulic flow modeling is employed to investigate the behaviour of the hydraulic
system in terms of pressure and flow rate when subjected to loads due to landing gear
extension and retraction (ref. 6). The analysis determine the load applied at the joints
during extension and retraction of the landing gear by hydraulic actuator. The actuation
force is dependent on the inertia of the combined structure and wheel assembly and the
hydraulic flow response. To determine these forces, the dynamic performance of the
landing gear hydraulics system during extension and retraction operations was examined
under various conditions using FLOWMASTER (ref. 7). The aircraft landing gear
extension and retraction may be simplified as a constant load on the hydraulic system.
However in order for the model to be applicable to actual landing gear extension and
retraction, the resultant load required is non-linear because of the changing position and
acceleration of the gear. It is the available pressure and flow rate delivered by the
hydraulic pump that will determine the acceleration and speed of extension or retraction
of the landing gear. On the other hand, the inertia of the landing gear resists the
acceleration imposed by the hydraulic actuator, which presented it as a dynamic load.
Thus, the inertia of the system interacts dynamically with the hydraulic system, resulting
in force balance giving rise to the final acceleration of the gear. Hence, simple kinematic
analysis cannot be used to determine the loads carried by the landing gear and wheel
doors during extension and retraction operations.

Figure 8 shows the hydraulic system model representing the complete system controlling
the actuation and locking of the gear and wheel well doors during extended and retracted
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phase for the main gear. In the presentation, the important item is the landing gear
actuator (circled in figure 8). The completeness of the system is necessary if it is to
assess the capability of the system to cope with all the demands of the system.


Figure 8: Flowmaster model representing the hydraulic components including
actuators for the landing gear, wheel well door, uplock and downlock.

The Flowmaster simulation use the Visual Basic logic script to simulate the sequence
of movement of the Door Uplock, Door Actuator, Door Downlock, Landing Gear
Uplock, Landing Gear Actuator and Landing Gear Downlock, throughout both the
extension and retraction of the landing gear.
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5.1. Analytical model for the LG actuator load

An analytical model shown in Figure 9 is required to derive the actuator force F
T

exerted by the hydraulic actuator in order to rotate the landing gear from a fully
extended position to a retracted position. The analysis of the applied force to
overcome gravity load and the inertia load ( i.e. the resistance by the mass M to
accelerate under applied force) gives the following equations.


Figure 9: Analytical model to derive the landing gear actuator load under applied
displacement, velocity and acceleration.

=

96 . 0
1
cos
2
1 AC
L
(1)

( )( )( )
( )( )

sin 96 . 0
2 L L
&
&
(2)
( )( )
( )( )( )
( )( )

+ =

sin 48 . 0
cos 48 . 0
&
& & & & &
L L L (3)
( )

=
AC
L

sin
8 . 0 sin (4)

I G T
F F F + = (5)
Finally, ( )
( )( )( )

sin . 12 sin
cos
& &
BC
T
L m
mg F (6)

A B
F
Y

F
F
X

90

mgx
mgy
mg
90

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From the equations obtained above, it can be seen that with input values of L , L
&
andL
& &
,
all the unknown values in the F
T
equation can now be defined when substituted into
the ,
&
,
& &
and sin equations. To obtain the values of L , L
&
and L
& &
gauges (see figure
10 for the concept of gauges) are connected to the hydraulic cylinder inside the
Flowmaster network to measure the displacement, velocity and acceleration. A visual
basic script controller embedded the above equations to give the required actuator load.
The Flowmaster solver iterates at each time step until convergence i.e. force balance is
achieved in which the actuator output force equal to the script calculated value.


Figure 10: Concept of defining a load on an actuator by means of a controller (rectangle)
and gauges (circles). The controller contains Visual Basic Script that processes the data
from gauges to calculate the applied load on the actuator.


6. Results and Discussion

Two different finite element models have been created, the first being a global model
consisting of all the major structural components and the second the local model for
contact stress evaluation in specific joints. Although it is linear elastic problem, the
global model problem is prohibitively expensive in computational time despite
simplifications such as rigid joints. The non-linear gap element local model can be run
quickly and yielded quick results.

6.1. Results of the Global Stress Analysis

The contour plots of von-mises equivalent stress are shown in figures 11 and 12 for the
load case of vertical reaction during touchdown. The mesh refinement on the main
structure yielded adequate stress results. However, due to the rigid assumption on the
rotating joints, the stresses near to the pins and bushes are unreliable, so more detailed
analysis was carried out using gap elements (see local analysis results in next section).

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Figure 11: Overall top and isometric view of von-mises equivalent stress for landing gear
during touchdown.



Figure 12: Von-mises stress contours on the wheel axle (left) and lower tension strut
(right) during touchdown.


6.2. Results of the Local Stress Analysis

Figure 13 shows the von-mises equivalent stress at the maximum load applied to the
actuator. The resulting contact stresses covers the area immediately below the pin. The
peak stress is considerably below the allowable stress for yielding indicating that the
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structure can still support further increase in load. However high loads can cause
deformation and progressive enlargement of the clearance gap between the pin and bush
in other joints, leading to looseness or play in the joint. A more suitable measure of
ability to sustain further load is through strain limits or through deformation based
measure.


Figure 13: Von-mises equivalent stress at bushpin region.

6.3. Results of Hydraulic Analysis

The actuator loading calculated by the Flowmaster simulation with the use of controller
script is shown in figure 13. In-flight conditions such as aerodynamic drag on the landing
gear during extension/retraction have not been included. This and other scenarios may be
evaluated in future.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Time <s>
0
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
E
x
t
e
r
n
a
l

P
i
s
t
o
n

L
o
a
d

<
N
>

Figure 13: Plot of landing gear actuator load against time during extension (at 4 seconds)
and retraction (at 30 seconds) phases.
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7. Conclusions

From the various loads and cases analysed, it can be seen that the bushing, pins, tension
strut and axle are components which experience higher stresses. The contact stress
between the pins and bushings are areas that experienced the highest von mises stresses
which currently under investigation. High contact stress is most likely to cause wear and
tear, result in minor deformation of the parts and thus further work are required to
develop a wear quantification model. FEM together with hydraulic simulation software
have been applied successfully to determine critical areas of the landing gear mechanism
in troubleshooting and identification of wear and distortion modes, as well as
understanding of the effects of the various loadings.


8. Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Air Logistics Division, Republic of Singapore Air Force for the
opportunity to work on this project. We would like to thank their staff members
especially; Ed Pang (former Head) Cpt. Phillip Ong and Ms. Foo Wei Ling for their
assistance and arrangement for site visits.


9. References

1. Conway, H. G., Landing Gear Design, Chapman & Hall, London, 1958.
2. Currey, N. S., Aircraft Landing Gear Design: Principles and Practices, AIAA
Education Series, Washington, 1988.
3. F-16 Aircraft information (Courtesy of AeB, ALD RSAF).
4. Neo G.K. F16 Main Landing Gear Modelling and Simulation. School of
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University.
Singapore.
5. Chu W.X. Finite Element Analysis of Contact Stress in Aircraft Landing Gear
Bush to Pin Bearings. School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,
Nanyang Technological University. Singapore.
6. Xin X.W. Simulation of Behaviour of Aircraft Landing Gear Hydraulic System.
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological
University. Singapore.
7. Flowmaster User Manual (www.flowmaster.com).