A landing gear is often an afterthought for aircraft designers. That leaves manufacturers like Fokker with very little time. The software that master LR student Patrick van Ginneken developed should make their life easier.
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Van Ginneken decided to develop the software while working as an intern at Fokker Landing Gear. After beginning his research in March of 2015, he interviewed designers, technical managers and other staff members at the company to gain a better understanding of the complications they often encounter while on the clock.
“How it works is a company like Boeing will decide to develop a new aircraft,” Van Ginneken said. “At some point, they will say, ‘hey, we’ll need to come up with landing gear too.’ Then they come to companies like Fokker and say ‘you guys are experts with landing gear so please help us. What do you think is the best solution?’ They usually want the analysis phase completed within six weeks.”
Tough deadlines like this one often don’t grant designers the opportunity to develop the best possible schematics. Worse yet, Van Ginneken discovered that countless hours are typically lost during the initial conceptual phase.
Designers are forced to spend entirely too much time completing repetitive calculations in order to estimate everything from gravitational forces to what sort of shock absorbers should be incorporated into their blueprints. This limits their ability to focus on other elements of the process, which further discourages progress and innovation.
‘Landing Gear in 30 Days’ could one day complete these calculations for them. It’s been nicknamed ‘LIT’ for short. In a recent interview, Van Ginneken explained how it works.
“Basically, as a designer you would enter the type of aircraft that you’re working with,” he said. “Then the software, with a standard set of different types of landing gear configurations, will provide an estimate. It will determine which option will be the lightest solution or the cheapest solution or a combination of both.”
LIT is still in the early stages at this point. Van Ginneken hopes that it will someday become a useful tool for Fokker’s employees.
“The whole idea is to make the code as efficient as possible and workable,” he said. “Not only for me while I developed it but for the guy developing it after me and the engineers that will work with it.”
Despite the nature of his research, Van Ginneken has plans to pursue a career outside of aviation. In March, he’ll begin working as a patent attorney.
Van Ginneken, Patrick, Development of an optimisation framework for landing gear design, Supervisors Dr. Mark Voskuijl and Peet Vergouwen, Defence: February 18, 2016.
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