Main Wheel Prerotation and Ground Taxi Driven by Electric Taxi System
Publication: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 32, Issue 6
Abstract
Civil aircraft with electric taxi systems use traction motors to rotate their wheels to move on the ground. When these aircrafts land on a runway, they are able to prerotate main wheels to reduce longitudinal forces applied on the wheels by the runway. To analyze the longitudinal forces, a new rigid-flex coupling prototype model was established. The new model consists of an aircraft body with six degree-of-freedom flexible landing struts and powered main wheels. Based on the new model, landing simulations were performed to analyze the dynamic responses of the powered main wheels. The dynamic responses included spin-up and spring back of the wheels, which were caused by extreme spin-up and spring back drag loads. The extreme loads applied on tires under three landing conditions were obtained and compared. After landing simulations, ground taxiing simulations were performed to analyze the dynamic responses of the powered main wheels. In the ground taxiing simulations, the aircraft movement was driven by the powered main wheels instead of by the main engines. Through the simulations of the powered main wheels, three conclusions were obtained: the prerotation of the powered main wheel decreases the spin-up and spring back drag loads; the rigid-flex coupling prototype model caused more vibration of the longitudinal forces; and adopting the powered main wheels for turning results in a smaller turning radius than using the main engines.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published paper.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 32 • Issue 6 • November 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 2, 2018
Accepted: Jun 4, 2019
Published online: Aug 6, 2019
Published in print: Nov 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Jan 6, 2020
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