Influential Parameter Analyses for Sinking Velocity with Measured Data

To study the effect of operational parameters on the sinking velocity of the landing gear of carrier-based aircraft, the influential analyses of various related parameters were performed based on the measured data of F/A-18. The probabilistic statistical characteristics of the sinking velocity were firstly investigated. And then correlation coefficient method and Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm were applied to finish influential parameter analyses. The analysis results show that the important influential parameters are aircraft glide angle, deck pitch angle, approaching velocity and engaging velocity; the mathematical model of sinking velocity is established by LM algorithm, and the determination coefficient is calculated via the variance analysis, which reveals that the proposed regression model is good. Compared with the measured data, the average errors for the predicted values of the established model of sinking velocity are less than 5%, which validates the effectiveness and feasibility of the method in engineering practice. The present efforts provide a way to study the relationships of the sinking velocity and the related influential parameters. And this work was proved to be a useful method for the study of sinking velocity.