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An aircraft’s interface with the ground—through its wheels, tires, and brakes—is critical to ensure safe and reliable operation, demanding constant technology development. Significant advancements have occurred with almost all civil airliners entering service with radial tires, and with the Boeing 787 having entered service in 2011 with electrically actuated carbon-carbon brakes. This book is divided into three sections: tires, control systems, and brakes, presenting a selection of the most relevant papers published by SAE International on these matters in the past fifteen years. They have been chosen to provide significant interest to those engineers working in the landing gear field. With almost all current large civil aircraft (and many smaller aircraft) opting exclusively for carbon-carbon brakes, a number of papers addressing the challenges of this technology are included. Papers touching on tire behavior and papers discussing brake control strategies are provided.

The aircraft landing gear and its associated systems represent a compelling design challenge: simultaneously a system, a structure, and a machine, it supports the aircraft on the ground, absorbs landing and braking energy, permits maneuvering, and retracts to minimize aircraft drag. Yet, as it is not required during flight, it also represents dead weight and significant effort must be made to minimize its total mass. The Design of Aircraft Landing Gear, written by R. Kyle Schmidt, PE (B.A.Sc. - Mechanical Engineering, M.Sc. - Safety and Aircraft Accident Investigation, Chairman of the SAE A-5 Committee on Aircraft Landing Gear), is designed to guide the reader through the key principles of landing system design and to provide additional references when available. Many problems which must be confronted have already been addressed by others in the past, but the information is not known or shared, leading to the observation that there are few new problems, but many new people.