52nd Aerospace Sciences Meeting

A novel take-off and landing system using ground based power is proposed in the EU-FP7 project GABRIEL.The proposed system has the potential benefit to reduce aircraft weight, emissions and noise.A preliminary investigation of the feasibility of the structural design of the connection mechanism between aircraft and ground system has been performed by simulating the landing procedure on a moving ground system.One of the key challenges is the landing on a moving ground system under high crosswind conditions.The main focus in the current research is the calculation of the impact loads on both aircraft and ground system for a wide range of landing conditions (sink rate, velocity differences between aircraft and ground system, etc.).For comparison, conventional landing procedures with a traditional landing gear have also been simulated.Two different aerodynamic models (empirical and vortex lattice method) have been used and compared in the simulations for verification and validation purposes.The results of this research study are a set of load cases and operational constraints that can be used for the structural design of the ground system and modifications to the aircraft.Detailed values are presented in the paper.