Load Analysis of the Nose Landing Gear During Turning and Towing of an Aircraft

Towbarless aircraft towing vehicles have become the mainstream special vehicles for ground towing. To prevent permanent damage to the aircraft's nose landing gear during braking operations by towbarless towing vehicles, ensuring their stable and reliable operation during ground towing is essential. This study investigates a domestic new-type towbarless aircraft towing vehicle and the Boeing 737-800 commercial airliner. The maximum load limits of key components of the nose landing gear obtained from dynamic simulation are used as input. Combined with the static simulation of the nose landing gear's finite element model and the dynamic analysis of the towing system, the stress changes in each component of the nose landing gear are simulated. The results show that under these restrictive conditions, the load on each component of the front landing gear is within the safety threshold. In actual towing, different towing speeds and angles can be used as the basis to obtain the load spectrum of the front landing gear through sensors, preparing for the subsequent establishment of industry inspection standards.