DESIGN OF A NEW, SAFER LANDING GEAR WITH IMPROVED DURABILITY AND RESISTANCE CAPACITY

THE PROJECT

Lortie Aviation owns and operates a unique fleet of special British fighter jets known as Hawker Hunters. Past breakdowns and incidents occurring on landing and takeoff have forced Lortie Aviation to question the reliability of the Hawker Hunter’s main landing gear. This situation led them to seek out Creaform Engineering’s expertise for diagnosing the root cause of the failure and identifying the limitations of the original design.

Creaform Engineering’s expertise in numerical simulation was called upon to identify why the main landing gear was not performing as expected. After acquiring data from the aircraft, finite element analysis (FEA) was used for stress and structural analysis. Numerical modeling and simulation were also essential to predict the lifespan and behavior of the mechanical system. This allowed the team to reproduce testing without excessive and destructive physical testing.

The investigation and analysis activities then evolved into a development project. After reviewing the original engineering, the team designed and validated new replacement parts with improved durability and resistance capacity, increasing the useful life of the main landing gear.

Along the project, Creaform Engineering assisted Lortie Aviation in all design, manufacturing, testing, and implementation phases. In all, it took 18 months to develop a new product with better mechanical properties. And three months later, the entire aircraft fleet was equipped with the new landing gear.

Numerical simulation contributed to developing the right product the first time while reducing costs and optimizing the choice of materials and coatings. Lortie Aviation now has a safer landing gear with a proven mechanical resistance that is 50% higher than the original one, without adding any weight!

Read the whole story here.

Services delivered

• 3D Metrology (for the reverse engineering of current parts and their environment and the inspection of new parts)
• Computer modeling and geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T)
• Numerical simulation (finite element analysis)
• Physical tests

GALLERY