Vibration Response Aspects of a Main Landing Gear Composite Door Designed for High-Speed Rotorcraft

One of the crucial issues affecting the structural safety of propeller vehicles is the propeller tonal excitation and related vibrations. Propeller rotation during flight generates vibrating sources depending upon its rotational angular velocity, number of blades, power at shaft generating aircraft thrust, and blade geometry. Generally, the higher energy levels generated are confined to 1st blade passing frequency (BPF) and its harmonics, while additional broadband components, mainly linked with the blade shape, the developed engine power, and the turbulent boundary layer (TBL), also contribute to the excitation levels. The vibrations problem takes on particular relevance in the case of composite structures. The laminates in fact could exert damping levels generally lower than metallic structures, where the greater amount of bolted joints allow for dissipating more vibration energy. The prediction and reduction of aircraft vibration levels are therefore significant considerations for conventional propeller aircrafts now entering the commercial market as well as for models currently being developed. In the Clean Sky 2 framework, the present study focuses on a practical case inherent to the AIRBUS-Racer program aiming to design and develop a multi-tasking fast rotorcraft. This paper defines a finite elements (FE)-based procedure for the characterization of the vibration levels of a main landing gear (MLG) composite door with respect to the expected operating tonal loads. A parametric assessment was carried out to evaluate the principal modal parameters (transfer functions and respective resonance frequencies, mode shapes, and damping coefficients) of the landing gear-door assembly in order to achieve reduced vibration levels. Based on the FE analysis results, the influence of the extra-damping, location, and number of ballast elements, the boundary conditions were investigated with respect to failure scenarios of the kinematic line opening the study towards aeroelastic evaluations. Further experimental ground test results serve as a validation database for the prediction numerical methods representative of the composite door dynamic response.