Aerowerx
Well-Known Member
I thought I had this all figure out, but somehow got myself confused over it.
I have read that a beam will fail on the tension side first. That is, if you have a 4 point simple suspended beam (as in a 1 piece landing gear leg), it will fail on the bottom first.
But there are some materials, such as wood, where the compression limit is significantly lower than the elastic limit (modulus of rupture for wood). So when predicting the failure load, do you use the elastic limit or the compression limit?
When running some example cases through the equations, I get vastly different sizes for the gear legs. Which translates into vastly different weights.
Also, if you use laminated wood strips (not steam bent) to form a curved gear leg, would not the strips have some 'built in' stress which I think would actually help the situation, since the built-in stress is opposite the landing loads?
I have read that a beam will fail on the tension side first. That is, if you have a 4 point simple suspended beam (as in a 1 piece landing gear leg), it will fail on the bottom first.
But there are some materials, such as wood, where the compression limit is significantly lower than the elastic limit (modulus of rupture for wood). So when predicting the failure load, do you use the elastic limit or the compression limit?
When running some example cases through the equations, I get vastly different sizes for the gear legs. Which translates into vastly different weights.
Also, if you use laminated wood strips (not steam bent) to form a curved gear leg, would not the strips have some 'built in' stress which I think would actually help the situation, since the built-in stress is opposite the landing loads?
