Abstract: To meet the overall design requirements of a certain type of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the design, analysis, and experimental verification of a skid-type landing gear were carried out. A dynamic finite element model of the composite skid-type landing gear was established, in which the fuselage structure was simplified using equivalent mass points. In the drop impact calculation, the influence of rotor lift was comprehensively considered, and the effective mass method, based on CCAR-27 regulations, was introduced to simulate the UAV landing process. Through simulation, the overload and structural response data of the fuselage during landing were obtained. Iterative optimisation was subsequently conducted on the ply regions of the arched beam to ensure the landing gear met the design landing velocity with appropriate overload. The maximum strain criterion was adopted to verify the strength of the arched beam, ultimately resulting in a landing gear structure that satisfies both strength and stiffness requirements. Drop test results show good agreement between simulation and experimental data, thereby validating the effectiveness of the proposed simulation process and design scheme. These findings provide significant guidance for the engineering design of composite skid-type landing gear.

Key words: composite materials, skid landing gear, drop test, laminate design, optimization, strength verification