Optimization of Landing Gear Fairings
March 2014 - August 2014
Overview
This project was done as a part of the course "AA322 Aerospace Laboratory II" at University of Washington. According to the course description, as a group students propose, design, build, and conduct laboratory experiments in one of the aerospace topic areas.
In this project, as a group, we looked into landing gear fairings of unique design like this one shown below. This design would lead to decrease in weight, which is significant for the aircraft. However, it would also cause drag increase.
Results
As a result, one of the models resulted in a 43.3 % weight decrease with a 42.9% drag increase compared to currently used model.
Through this project, I gained a lot of valuable experiences such as conducting wind tunnel testing and water tunnel testing, fabrication of prototypes using machine shops, CAD drawing, team management, report writing and interpersonal communication.
