Sender: <marv@lancaironline.net> (Marvin Kaye)
To: lml
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 19:56:14 -0500
Message-ID: <redirect-1996284@logan.com>
From: RWolf99@aol.com
Subject: LNC2 Nose Gear
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Scott Krueger writes:

<<425 sits on the nose gear which is at about 12* (I think?) rake, thus 
applying some "pull apart force" on the link.  Also, upon gear retraction, 
the nose is the last to come up because of gas spring pressure adding to the 
pull required.  During flight, main links hold up their weight, nose holds up 
its weight on a longer arm plus force of gas spring.  Am I overy cautious?>>

Ahh, no.  I forgot about those things.  The static load on the parked nose 
gear does, in fact, apply a small tensile load.  I would not worry about 
that.  Also, if you bang the nose gear on it's side while landing (and we all 
will) then the side load should be absorbed by the blocks attaching it to the 
engine mount, but there could concievably be some bending applied to the 
postulated rod end bearing.  Still, I don't think that would hurt anything 
since some relief is allowed for by the rotational freedom of the spherical 
rod end bearing.  So I think we're okay there, too.  The gas strut attaches 
at the "knee" of the drag link (as I recall -- the airplane is in the garage 
and I'm at work pretending to be busy) so the gas strut loads don't go into 
the rod end at all.

My brain is full today.  I don't want to dig into this when there's a 
talented and energetic youngster (Tim Ong) chomping at the bit (I hope).  But 
if Tim is too busy then I guess I can whip up something.  I'd find a steel 
rod end bearing that had an equivalent bending strength to the drag link at 
the point of connection.  Then I'd model the amputated drag link in our CAD 
system here at work (if I can figure out how) and try to run the stress 
analysis package (yuk) and see how it turns out.  Then go over to the local 
machine shop and get a quote on several of these.

Not what I really wanted to do, but if nobody else picks up the ball I guess 
I'll have to...

- Rob Wolf
Lazy Slob (at least today)