Continuation Analysis of Aircraft Ground Loads During High-Speed Turns

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Continuation Analysis of Aircraft Ground Loads During High-Speed Turns

Coetzee, Etienne / Krauskopf, Bernd / Lowenberg, Mark

The current lateral ground loads requirement for an aircraft during a high-speed turn was written in the middle of the last century when relatively small aircraft with tricycle landing gear arrangements started to emerge. This requirement is known to be conservative when applied to large modern passenger aircraft. Nonlinearities (such as tire forces) have a significant effect at the edge of operating envelopes, placing a renewed interest on analysis methods that can classify the dynamics in these regions. In this paper, a continuation analysis is used to assess the loads that can be generated for different aircraft configurations during high-speed turns and to compare the results to the original requirement. A comparison is made between test results from a Federal Aviation Admistration study and continuation results, where all of the significant test data points are located within an envelope constructed from a continuation analysis. Continuation analysis, therefore, provides a conservative estimate of the maximum lateral load factors. These values are, however, less than the value prescribed in the regulation.