Landing Gear

\label{sec:trade_LG} For the landing gear there are 2 choices to be made for the conceptual design. The first one is the choice between a tricycle and a tail-dragger will depend on the location of the propeller because the clearance of the propeller is of great importance. A puller propeller will be combined with a tail-dragger and a pusher propeller with a tricycle. The other choice is whether to design the landing gear to be retractable or fixed.

Trade-Off Criteria and Weights

For this trade-off three criteria were used:

• Weight: The weight of the landing gear is and important parameter because the complete aircraft has to be as light as possible.

• Drag: The aerodynamic characteristics of the landing gear are also important. Because the landing gear will not produce any lift, the drag is a good indication for the aerodynamic behavior.

• Complexity: The complexity of the design can be expressed as the number of individual parts that are needed for a design. A design where more parts are needed will be more difficult to design and produce.

There are no exact numbers known at this point, therefore both options will be compared qualitatively for all the configurations.

The weights were obtained using a pairwise comparison of the three criteria and can be seen in Table \ref{tab:LG_weights}

\label{tab:LG_weights}

Trade-Off Landing Gear

The trade-off was performed and the outcome is presented in Table \ref{tab:trade_LG}. The fixed landing gear turned out to be the best choice for our design.

\label{tab:trade_LG}

One consideration to be made is that the fixed landing gear will cause an increase of drag. However, according to the current RBAR regulations \cite{committee2010} all the competing aircraft are required to have a fixed landing gear. Therefore the drag increase should not be a cause for performing worse than the current competitors.