Shimmy dynamics in a dual-wheel nose landing gear with freeplay under stochastic wind disturbances

Shimmy dynamics of a dual-wheel nose landing gear system with torsional freeplay under stochastic lateral wind disturbances is studied. Dynamic characteristics of the deterministic case are numerically analysed, especially the shimmy of the landing gear through bifurcation analysis. Meanwhile, the influences of the freeplay nonlinearity on shimmy behaviours are examined in detail. We found that the freeplay leads to an enlargement of the shimmy area and an enhancement of the shimmy characteristics compared to the case without freeplay. Furthermore, impacts of stochastic lateral wind disturbances on the shimmy of the landing gear system are estimated via time history and recurrence plots. We find that the stochastic excitation enhances shimmy of the lateral bending direction. More interestingly, the stochastic excitation strengthens the effect of the freeplay nonlinearity, which causes random intermittent large-amplitude oscillations in the torsional direction. Our results show that the interaction between the freeplay nonlinearity and the random load induces a significant reduction in the critical shimmy velocity, which has an adverse impact on the stability of the nose landing gear of an aircraft. This work will provide an insightful guidance for the design of landing gear parameters in engineering practice.