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In the present study, an electromagnetic shock-absorber (EMSA) is proposed for a landing structure of a spaceship. The proposed EMSA consists of a copper and steel combined tube, a piston, permanent magnets, and a steel ring. A magnet fixed on the piston is designed to move through the tube when driven by an external shock. Shock energy is partially dissipated by an eddy current damping force and a friction force generated from the relative motion of the tube and the magnet. Some of the energy is stored in a magnetic spring consisting of two magnets in which their poles act against each other. To investigate and predict the performance of the proposed EMSA these damping and magnetic forces are simulated and approximated by using an electromagnetic finite element program. Their approximations are verified by experimental results and the numerical model of the proposed EMSA is consequently developed. The proposed EMSA is fabricated and its performance is predicted and verified by the drop test.

In this paper, we studied the shimmy phenomena of an aircraft nose landing gear considering free-play. Shimmy is a self-excited vibration in lateral and torsional directions of a landing gear during either the take-off or landing. This phenomena is caused by a couple of conditions such as low torsional stiffness of the strut, friction and free-play in the gear, wheel imbalance, or worn parts, and it may make an aircraft unstable. Free-play non-linearity is linearized by the described function for a stability analysis in a frequency domain, and time marching is performed using the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method. We performed the numerical simulation of the nose landing gear shimmy and investigated its linear and nonlinear characteristics. From the numerical results, we found limit-cycle-oscillations at the speed under linear shimmy speed for the case considering free-play and it can be concluded that the shimmy stability can be decreased by free-play.

Shimmy is a self-excited vibration in lateral and torsional directions of a landing gear during either the take-off or landing. It is caused by a couple of conditions such as a low torsional stiffness of the strut, a free-play in the landing gear, a wheel imbalance, or worn parts, and it may make the aircraft unstable. This study was performed for an analysis of the shimmy stability on a small aircraft. A nose landing gear was modeled as a linear system and characterized by state-equations which were used to analyze the stability both in the frequency and time-domain for predicting whether the shimmy occurs and investigating a good design range of the important parameters. The root-locus method and the 4th Runge-Kutta method were used for each analysis. Because the present system has a simple mechanism using a friction to reinforce the stability, the friction, a non-linear factor, was linearized by a describing function and considered in the analysis and observed the result of the instability reduction.

The shock absorber with magnetic effect is suggested for a lunar lander. The shock absorber consists of a metal tube, a piston rod, and several permanent magnets moved by a piston rod in the tube, and the shock energy can be dispersed and dissipated by magnetic effects such as the magnetic force existed between a metal and magnets and the eddy current effect generated by a relative motion with a conductor and magnets. Besides, the shock-absorbing effect similar to that of a coil spring can be obtained by arranging the magnets in line, which are facing the same polar each other. The device has a very simple structure and is usable in space due to the unnecessariness of any oil or gas. The shock absorber was designed and manufactured for experiments and its spring and damping characteristics were studied by the theoretical, analytical and experimental methods.