Nonlinear analysis of lateral loading during taxiway turns

We present a general approach to assess an aircraft's performance during taxiway manoeuvres across the range of its operation. The main motivation for this work is to evaluate the suitability of the existing Federal Aviation Regulation for lateral loads experienced during turning manoeuvres. To this end, operating regions are defined in terms of parameters specifying the approach velocity and steering input for a generic turn that is representative of pilot practice. The limits of the operating regions represent the extremes of the aircraft's operation during turning as determined by the maximal lateral loading conditions identified in published studies of instrumented in-service passenger aircraft. The performance of the turn can be assessed over the entire operational range in terms of the actual loads experienced at individual landing gears. Recent studies by the Federal Aviation Administration of instrumented aircraft have been limited to investigating the lateral loads experienced at the aircraft's CG position. Our results show that this information is insufficient to predict the actual loads experienced by individual landing gears, especially for the nose gear which is found to experience considerably higher lateral loads than predicted by the corresponding loads at CG. We find a robustness in the results with respect to changes in the aircraft's mass and the criterion used to define the limits of the operating regions.