Buoyed by a spate of big contracts over the last 12 months, Messier-Dowty has adorned its stand (B10, Hall 4) with examples of landing gear for many of the world's most important new civil and military programmes.
The world-leading undercarriage provider was selected to supply the Boeing 7E7 main and nose gear in March, the Airbus A400M main gear in February, and Russian Regional Jet integrated gear system last October. The first two can be seen here, along with the Airbus A380 nose gear, Eurofighter Typhoon main gear, and nose units for the Bombardier Challenger 300 and Raytheon Hawker Horizon business jets.
The concept for the 7E7 gear comprises main legs with four-wheel trucks and twin braces and a forward-retracting cantilever nose leg with push-pull steering. Messier-Dowty is now working with Boeing on the details of the configuration, aiming to finalise it next year.
Together with the still to be named suppliers of wheels, tyres, brakes, steering, brake control and actuation systems, Messier-Dowty is forming a joint life-cycle product team (LCPT) to address all aspects of the landing gear throughout the life of the aircraft.
Principles
The company will apply lean-manufacturing principles to creating the 7E7 gear, aiming to eliminate waste from the overall process. Design work will be based on Dassault's CATIA V5 software and three-dimensional modelling will be used from initial design through to testing and inspection.
Design teams will be based in North America and Europe, with Messier-Dowty engineers assigned to Boeing. Testing will take place at Messier-Dowty's centres at Gloucester, UK, and Toronto.
The A400M landing gear is designed to support soft-field landings and to allow kneeling and raising for the loading of large military and civilian vehicles. The mock-up on the stand depicts a preliminary concept comprising three independent high-flotation twin-wheel assemblies housed in the fuselage sponsons. To meet the kneeling/raising requirement the shock-absorbers have been designed to ensure a minimum distance between the ground and aircraft structure, whatever the loading conditions.
First delivery to the Airbus Military assembly line in Seville is scheduled for 2006 in preparation for a first flight in 2008.
BRENDAN GALLAGHER
Source: Flight Daily News
