Consequences of Towbarless Towing on Nose-Wheel Landing Gear Fatigue
A Comparative Assessment for General-Aviation Nose-Wheel Landing Gear
A.P. Masle (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
J.A. Pascoe – Mentor (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
L. Tofoni – Mentor
R.C. Alderliesten – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
S. Giovani Pereira Castro – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
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Abstract
Towbarless towing is increasingly used in general-aviation ground handling, yet its fatigue implications for nose-wheel landing gear remain poorly understood. This thesis compares towbar and towbarless towing for representative aft-folding tricycle nose-wheel landing gear configurations in the 4,000–9,000 kg MTOM class. A sequential methodology combined in-field towing measurements, reconstruction of towbarless manoeuvre histories, staged global-local finite-element analysis, and laboratory fatigue testing. For the investigated configuration, this led to substantially higher fatigue severity and materially shorter measured life under towbarless-derived spectra, although overload sequence effects may partly moderate the net penalty in mixed operations.