A Study on Fatigue Fracture Failure of UAV Landing Gear

Vignesh A.S.*, Vivek A.**
*UG Student, Department of Mechanical Engineering, R.V College of Engineering, Bangalore, India.
**UG Student, Department of Mechanical Engineering, R.V College of Engineering, Bangalore, India.
Periodicity:November - January'2016
DOI : https://doi.org/10.26634/jme.6.1.3736

Abstract

With an increase in demand for high performance UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) for various demanding applications such as defense, search and rescue and weather monitoring, the design and production of the UAVs is of prime importance and with the UAVs comprising of many complex systems, the reliability of each system decides the reliability of the overall aircraft. One of the UAV’s critical components is its landing gear. High stiffness and lightweight are the main design criteria for the landing gear. Apart from the fatigue cycles, the propagation of crack in the landing gear structure due to the fatigue loading is also another important criterion for the design of the landing gear structure. This study is conducted using the Structural analysis available in ANSYS R15.0 using Mechanical APDL solver. In this paper, the authors have studied the effect of contours and crack length on variation of stress intensity factor for different modes and fatigue crack propagation rate. Static analysis is performed to locate the position of critical region. The variation of J Integral is studied for different contours along the crack front. The crack propagation rate was found to increase with the increase in crack length. The critical stress intensity factor is evaluated using modified Paris Law referred to as Forman Law.

Keywords

Landing Gear, Fatigue-Fracture, Stress Intensity Factor, Crack Growth Rate, Paris Law, Forman Law

How to Cite this Article?

Vignesh, A. S., and Vivek, A. (2016). A Study on Fatigue Fracture Failure of UAV Landing Gear. i-manager’s Journal on Mechanical Engineering, 6(1), 9-15. https://doi.org/10.26634/jme.6.1.3736

References

[1]. Forman, R.G, Kearney, V.E and Engle, R.M. (1967). “Numerical Analysis of Crack Propagation in Cyclic-Loaded Structure”, Journal of Basic Engineering, Transactions of ASME, Vol. 89, No. 3 , pp. 459-464.
[2]. Fujimoto W.T, & Gallagher J.P. (1977). “Summary of Landing Gear Initial Flaws”, AFFDL-TR-77-125.
[3]. Dorothea C. Walden. (1990). “Applications of composites in Commercial Airplanes”, Structural Composites Design & Processing Technologies, Proceedings of the sixth Annual ASM / ESP Advanced Composite Conference, Detroit, Michigan, USA, 8 -11 Oct, pp 77-80.
[4]. Amith Goyal, (2002). “Light Aircraft Main Landing Gear Design and Development” SAS Tech Journals, pp. 45-50.
[5]. Solanki K, Daniewicz SR, & Newman Jr JC (2004). “Finite element analysis of plasticity-induced fatigue crack closure: an overview”. Engineering Fracture Mech 71, No. 2 , pp. 149–171.
[6]. E. Dautriat, (2011). “Tackling the Environmental Challenges to Aeronautics”. Aerodays, Madrid, pp .55-62.
[7]. A. Amendola, G. Iannuzz, P. Cerreta and R. Pinto (2011). “Future Aerostructure for the Next Generation Green Civil Aircraft”, Aerodays, Madrid.
[8]. Lucintel Brief, (2011). “Growth Opportunity in Global UAV Market”, Lucintel, USA.
[9]. ICAO Doc.9966, (2012). “Fatigue Risk Management Systems”, Canada.
[10]. ICAO Air Navigation Bureau, (2013). “Global Aviation Safety Plan”, Montreal.
[11]. Al- Bhakali, & Elkenani Hisham (2013). “NVH and Random Vibration fatigue Analysis of a Landing Gear’s Leg th for an Un-Manned Aerial Vehicle Usinf LS-DYNA”. 9 European LS-SYNA Conference.
[12]. EASA CS-Series, (2014). “CS-22, CS-23, CS-25, CS-27, CS-29, CS-31GB, CS-31HB, CS-E, CS-P, CS-LSA, CS-VLA, CSVLR”. EASA, Cologne, Germany.
[13]. P.W.R. Beaumont (2015). Structural Integrity and the Implementation of Engineering Composite Materials. Wood Head Publishing, pp. 353-397.
If you have access to this article please login to view the article or kindly login to purchase the article

Purchase Instant Access

Single Article

North Americas,UK,
Middle East,Europe
India Rest of world
USD EUR INR USD-ROW
Online 15 15

Options for accessing this content:
  • If you would like institutional access to this content, please recommend the title to your librarian.
    Library Recommendation Form
  • If you already have i-manager's user account: Login above and proceed to purchase the article.
  • New Users: Please register, then proceed to purchase the article.