Analysis of Uneven Wear of Aircraft Landing Gear Hatch Lock Mechanism

An essential part of the aircraft, the aircraft landing gear hatch lock directly affects the landing gear's ability to retract normally. However, there are an increasing number of cases of landing gear system failure brought on by a failure of the lock mechanism's movement accuracy. This is primarily because of uneven wear at the hatch lock mechanism's hinges, which was transferred to the locking hook and resulted in a change in the locking hook's angle. This paper divides the hatch lock mechanism's six hinges around their perimeter to handle the aforementioned issue, and it adopts the dynamics modeling approach of a multi-body mechanism with clearance while taking into account the presence of clearance at the journal and bushing. The law of uneven wear of six bushings under five different initial clearances is studied using the Archard model under the conditions of chosen wear cycles, and the result is the effect of uneven wear on the locking angle of the locking hook, which serves as a guide for the degradation law and life prediction of the hatch lock mechanism.