A landing gear testing setup to measure impact forces under real conditions with the help of a piezoelectric dynamometer.

Aircraft landing gear and brake testing

Landing exposes the landing gear strut and the entire aircraft structure to high-level forces and shocks. Maintenance of landing gear and brakes is critical to safety. Aircraft brake dynamometer testing simulates actual operating conditions, including taxiing, take-off and landing.

Aviation engineers perform a series of quality and fatigue tests on the landing gear. Touchdown on the runway is by far the largest load case for the landing gear. The wheels accelerate to landing speed in almost no time. The inertial mass of the wheels creates a large force.

For realistic testing, the wheels of the landing gear are accelerated up to landing speed. Then the landing gear is dropped, creating a load similar to a real touchdown. By measuring these forces, the landing gear design can be verified and the forces and moments occurring in the aircraft structure can be determined.

Kistler offers customers complete engineering solutions with the benefits of high accuracy and very short delivery times.

Key technologies for the application

Guaranteed and proven

We provide a ready-to-use force plate, fully designed and calibrated according to customer needs allowing for Guaranteed accuracy and proven load range.

High natural frequency and high accuracy

Thanks to its high rigidity, low crosstalk and good linearity, piezoelectric technology can achieve high natural frequencies and excellent accuracy.

Flexibility

Every sensor based on Kistler's piezoelectric technology has an extremely wide measuring range, so just one sensor can cover an enormous variety of tests and load cases.