Optimum design and experiment of composite leaf spring landing gear for electric aircraft
Donghui Li, Zhenwei Fan, Yewei Zhang, Jian Zang, Fengtian Yang
Abstract
The composite leaf spring landing gear of an electric aircraft is optimized. With the strength and workability as constraints and the minimum structural weight as an objective, the two-stage optimization of the leaf spring landing gear with glass fiber unidirectional prepreg is carried out using a genetic algorithm, namely, the optimization of continuous thickness of layup, and the optimization of the layup sequence and discrete thickness. In the optimization process, the ground loads are calculated according to the structural stiffness of each chromosome, thus the stiffness constraints are relaxed, and the optimization results are compared with those using stiffness constraints. The static experiment verification reveals that the numerical simulation and experimental results are consistent, that is, the optimized leaf spring meets the strength requirements. The results show that the leaf spring landing gear based on two-stage optimization method achieves the objective of weight reduction.