Design of an Improved Green Taxiing System Focused around the Landing Gear

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part D:

Nie

Zhang

2018

Electric landing gear drive equipped with traction motors can provide taxi capability without the use of main engines or tractor. The ground handling characteristic of aircraft with electric taxi system is analyzed. The new mathematic model of aircraft ground maneuver is established, considering the 6-degree-freedom aircraft body and the flexible main strut and the powered wheel. Quasi-steady method is applied to calculate tire side forces and moments, to determine side slip. The simulation for the ground steering response of aircraft with electric taxi system is done by employing ADAMS and Simulink co-simulation platform. The dynamic responses of aircraft ground steering and landing gear spin-up and spring back are simulated. Different taxi conditions including powered nose wheel mode and powered main wheel mode are compared. Four conclusions are obtained: electric taxi system helps the aircraft turn on the spot and the turning radius is smaller than the aircraft using engines; differential powered main wheel mode has the minimum turning radius while turning-circle with uniform velocity, and it has smaller difference between two vertical loads of main landing gear than powered nose wheel mode; in the case of the same steering angle, the extreme velocity of differential powered main wheel mode before side slip is larger than powered nose wheel mode; and pre-rotation of powered main wheel decreases the spin-up drag load and spring back drag load.

Section: Simulation Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of ground handling characteristic of aircraft with electric taxi system

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part D:

Nie

Zhang

2018

“…4 Since the engines are not used during the taxiing process, the damage probability of their blades can be reduced, and the engine efficiency can be improved. 9 In this paper, a novel design of the construction aspects of the EGTS is addressed, and the virtual prototype of the powered wheel electric drive system is established in the software CATIA (Dassault Systems). The powered wheel electric drive system is actuated by the electric traction motors with high power and torque densities to provide taxiing capabilities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…4 Since the engines are not used during the taxiing process, the damage probability of their blades can be reduced, and the engine eﬃciency can be improved. 9…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimization of powered wheels for commercial aircraft and design of test scheme

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part D:

2022

Electric landing gear drives equipped with traction motors are able to power the wheels of single-aisle commercial aircraft to provide the capability of taxiing on the ground. The powered wheels are utilized to solve the problems of low engine efficiency, high fuel consumption and high pollution of the aircraft during the taxiing process. The powered wheel electric drive system consists of an electric traction motor, a set of planetary gear assembly, and a wheel. This paper optimizes the parameters of the planetary gear assembly of the electric drive system to improve the outputted torque of the powered wheel. After that, two test schemes are designed for the powered wheel electric drive system to measure its torque. These two test schemes use moment of inertia and resistance loading to replace the actual vertical load of the aircraft applied on the powered wheel during the taxiing process. The first scheme uses the mass block to simulate the mass of the general aircraft, whereas the second scheme uses a flywheel with a variable moment of inertia to simulate the mass of large commercial aircraft.

“…8 Currently, the research on the dynamic response of aircraft wheels is very limited focusing on a subset of tire forces. By analysing the tire maximum force and the time required to reach this force at touchdown, Georgia Institute of Technology 9 studied the tire wear reduction of MWs for different pre-rotation values; however, it only used one life expectancy equation. Ian Sobieski 10 collected experimental data with a small aircraft wheel; however, the feasibility of using the ETS to rotate wheels is not investigated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research on loads applied on powered wheels and struts of civil aircraft at touchdown

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C:

2021

Pre-rotating aircraft wheels is a valid method to reduce the drag loads applied on such wheels by the ground at touchdown. The drag loads have the probability to cause landing strut binding, which has negative effects on the landing gear and requires further analysis. To analyse the probability of the binding of the landing struts, a novel friction triangle model of the landing strut is established in a two-dimensional configuration. This paper builds a 6-degree-of-freedom aircraft dynamic model, consisting of an aircraft fuselage, landing struts, nose and main wheels. On the basis of such model, a set of dynamic analysis is performed to output the forces applied on the landing struts and wheels during spin-up and spring back processes. The maximum values of such forces are studied considering different pre-rotation speeds of the wheels. Through the new models applied in this paper, three conclusions are obtained. The first is that the main landing struts have the highest probability of strut binding at the moment of the first touchdown. The second is that the wheel pre-rotation decreases the probability of landing strut binding when the aircraft initially touches the ground. The third is that the multi-body dynamic model considering the flexible deformation of landing struts outputs drag loads with more and higher-frequency vibrations than the rigid strut model.