Fluid and structural analysis of Rayack-43 landing gear

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the performance of the landing gear which consists of two parts, the wheel fairing and the landing gear structure. For this reason two separate studies were conducted. The first study covered the flow behavior across the wheel fairing. The second study involved the behavior of the landing gear structure subjected to different scenarios. For the fluid part of the project, a two dimensional computational fluid dynamics study of the wheel fairing was conducted using FLUENTTM. As for the structural part, a three dimensional finite element analysis using ANSYS WORKBENCHTM was set for the landing gear structure. The sharp contours of the original wheel fairing design contributed to a fairly high drag coefficient and a detached flow around the fairing. This led to a new wheel fairing design proposal. As for the structural performance different scenarios where conducted started with the simplest until we reach a logical case close to that of the real one. Both the structural and fluid analysis complete each other in order to give us a general idea of the overall performance of the landing gear.