What Is Landing Gear

What is landing gear? Landing gear is the structure under a plane's fuselage that allows it to land safely. The earliest landing gear consisted of skids, but designers soon attached wheels to the skids. Landing gear must have some mechanism for absorbing the force of the landing in addition to the airplane's weight. Landing gear also provides mobility to the aircraft on ground or water.

Types of landing gear •

Conventional landing gear Consists of two wheels forward of the aircraft's center of gravity and a third, smaller wheel at the tail. It also called as “Taildragger” because when the airplane on ground the tail is closer to the ground.

Example: D140C

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Mousquetaire

Tricycle landing gear Consists of a forward (nose) wheel and a pair of wheels located midway on the fuselage.

Example: Yakonlev Yak-15

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Quadricycle Gear similar to the bicycle arrangement except there are four main gear roughly equal in size and mounted along the fuselage.

Example: B-52 Stratofortress

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Tandem landing gear Consists of a main gear of two sets of wheels set one behind the other. Also called as a bicycle landing gear.

Example: AV-8 Harrier

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Multi-Bogey Gear

Use of multiple wheels per landing gear strut. place two wheels on the nose strut of the tricycle arrangment to provide safety and steering control in case of a tire blowout. Example: An-225

Reference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_landing_gear http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Tricycle_gear http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Dictionary/Landing_Gear/DI111.htm http://www.aerospace.org