Calibration of Mirage Main Undercarriage to Determine Wheel Loads from Measured Strains

摘要

The port and starboard legs of a test main undercarriage of the Mirage III0 have each been instrumented with six independent strain gauges and a potentiometer to measure oleo deflection. Calibration tests were performed in which components of the ground-to-wheel load were applied to each leg, both singly and in combination, and, from the measured strains, calibration parameters were derived. In order to determine wheel load components from measured strains, an iterative method of inverting the non-linear set of equations formed from the calibration parameters was developed. It was found that, due to the insensitive response of any gauge to the vertical load component, the equations were ill-conditioned, with calculated load components being very sensitive to changes in the measured strains. (Author)