Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Landing gear
Summary
Landing gear is the undercarriage of an aircraft or spacecraft that is used for takeoff or landing. For aircraft it is generally needed for both. It was also formerly called alighting gear by some manufacturers, such as the Glenn L. Martin Company. For aircraft, Stinton makes the terminology distinction undercarriage (British) = landing gear (US).
For aircraft, the landing gear supports the craft when it is not flying, allowing it to take off, land, and taxi without damage. Wheeled landing gear is the most common, with skis or floats needed to operate from snow/ice/water and skids for vertical operation on land. Faster aircraft have retractable undercarriages, which fold away during flight to reduce drag.
Some unusual landing gear have been evaluated experimentally. These include: no landing gear (to save weight), made possible by operating from a catapult cradle and flexible landing deck: air cushion (to enable operation over a wide range of ground obstacles and water/snow/ice); tracked (to reduce runway loading).
For launch vehicles and spacecraft landers, the landing gear usually only supports the vehicle on landing, and is not used for takeoff or surface movement.
Given their varied designs and applications, there exist dozens of specialized landing gear manufacturers. The three largest are Safran Landing Systems, Collins Aerospace (part of Raytheon Technologies) and Héroux-Devtek.
The landing gear represents 2.5 to 5% of the maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) and 1.5 to 1.75% of the aircraft cost, but 20% of the airframe direct maintenance cost. A suitably-designed wheel can support , tolerate a ground speed of 300 km/h and roll a distance of ; it has a 20,000 hours time between overhaul and a 60,000 hours or 20 year life time.
File:Piper Cub Góraszka (cropped).JPG|Conventional/taildragger [[Piper Cub]]
File:Cessna 152 PR-EJQ (8476096843).jpg|Tricycle [[Cessna 152]]
File:US Navy 080922-N-2183K-061 An AV-8B Harrier jet lands aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu (LHA 5).jpg|Bicycle [[AV-8B Harrier]]
File:XC-120 front view.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.