Non-linear Shimmy Analysis of a Nose Landing Gear with Friction

Abstract

Shimmy is a self-excited vibration in lateral and torsional directions of a landing gear during either the take-off or landing. It is caused by a couple of conditions such as a low torsional stiffness of the strut, a free-play in the landing gear, a wheel imbalance, or worn parts, and it may make the aircraft unstable. This study was performed for an analysis of the shimmy stability on a small aircraft. A nose landing gear was modeled as a linear system and characterized by state-equations which were used to analyze the stability both in the frequency and time-domain for predicting whether the shimmy occurs and investigating a good design range of the important parameters. The root-locus method and the 4th Runge-Kutta method were used for each analysis. Because the present system has a simple mechanism using a friction to reinforce the stability, the friction, a non-linear factor, was linearized by a describing function and considered in the analysis and observed the result of the instability reduction.