Client

Aeronautical Development
Establishment (ADE), DRDO

Industry

Aerospace, Defence

Challenge

DRDO was developing an indigenous long endurance drone. The airframe had been developed, whereas development of the landing gear system was to be initiated. It was unimaginable to develop the system in a short span of few months and DRDO considered retrofitting a landing gear of a different aircraft which would not have met all performance requirements.

 

Timetooth took the challenge of developing a specifically designed landing gear system from scratch at similar cost and timeline as the retrofit option.

Service Area

Turnkey New Product Development

Timeline

March 2013 to February 2015

Qualification testing demonstrated great correlation (>90%) between simulation results and real world tests. Timetooth became the first indigenous private company to be certified by CEMILAC and DGAQA for development of airworthy landing gears in India.

Landing Gear Configuration

1. Tricycle arrangement (a. Nose Landing Gear, b. Main Landing Gear).

2. Oleo-pneumatic Non-retractable system.

3. Electrically actuated steering on Nose wheel.

4. Electrically actuated brakes on Main Wheels.

Solutions

The landing gear system is one of the most critical subsystems of aircraft. It protects the aircraft from landing shocks and is also used for on-ground operations like steering and braking. Timetooth leveraged Multibody dynamics and CFD analysis for optimizing the dynamic performance of the strut, FE analysis for ensuring structural strength and Modal analysis for vibrations management. Timetooth designed the system as per US FAR Part 23 standards. Timetooth partnered with its local ecosystem of vendors for aerospace grade manufacturing and procured standard items from its global supply chain. To enable ground trials of the aircraft, a first prototype was supplied speedily. Qualification testing demonstrated great correlation (>90%) between simulation results and real world tests. Timetooth became the first indigenous private company to be certified by CEMILAC and DGAQA for development of airworthy landing gears in India.

Key Highlights

ROI for the client

Airworthy landing system was delivered in a record time of 1.5 years.

Maiden flight of the UAV successfully completed on the Timetooth landing system.