Study on Effect of Spring and Damping Elements on UAV Landing Gear System

As the world recovers from a global pandemic, the need for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for delivery of medical as well as emergency critical supplies is more than ever. This research study aims for the development of a suitable damping mechanism in landing gear to ensure safety of sensitive payloads during the delivery. The damping mechanism consists of a spring damper system that protects the critical medical payload keeping the shock transmitted due to impact on landing well below 5g allowing us to perform delivery of the required number of supplies even in rough runways. We simplified the landing gear into a mass-spring-damper system and modelled it using MATLAB/Simulink for a given set of aircraft parameters. The model was first validated with reference case and sensitivity analysis of damping coefficient and spring constant to the shock transmitted was conducted. We finally obtained the relation between the required stiffness of the damping mechanism and the corresponding damping coefficient to keep the shock transmitted below 5g which could then be utilized for the choice of materials necessary in landing gear design.

In 17^th International Conference on Vibration Engineering and Technology of Machinery-VETOMAC 2022