Vibration Control of Flexible Multibody Aircraft During Touchdown Impacts

A method is presented for the dynamic analysis and vibration control of large scale flexible multibody aircraft during the touchdown impacts and rollover motion. The rollover motion is simulated by modeling the uneven runway profile as a stationary zero mean space dependent random process defined by its spectral shape. The prescribed motions at the two landing gears will then represent a different time dependent random process with spectral shapes changing with the change in velocity of the aircraft. Composite materials which provide higher stiffness-to-weight ratios are used as a passive control system to reduce the aircraft vibration. The results of the numerical example presented showed that the use of composites can have a significant effect on attenuating the vibration of the aircraft during the touchdown impact and rollover motion. The numerical results are obtained using the general purpose computer program DAMS (Dynamic Analysis of Multibody System).