The Large Landing Gear of the Future project will develop, mature and demonstrate key technologies that will improve the efficiency of aircraft landing gears in their design, manufacture, operation and cost of ownership. It will take a holistic view of the landing gear system construction and life cycle seeking to benefit from closer integration of key components and functions that have historically been addressed separately. The project will use technology demonstrators representative of an operational landing gear to validate the project outcomes. Messier-Dowty Ltd will lead a strong consortium of partners and subcontractors drawn from UK industry, the High Value Manufacturing Catapult Centres and academia to deliver the project.

Messier-Bugatti-Dowty has partnered with The Technology Partnership, the University of Sheffield and the University of Cambridge to conduct a research project into health and usage monitoring for aircraft landing gears. The project aims to demonstrate how usage data can be captured and stored for a landing gear, how the real life experienced by a landing gear compares with the design assumptions, how life experience impacts on the health state of the landing gear and how that life data can be tracked using identity tagging technology. The project will also investigate self-learning mathematical modelling techniques that can reliably predict the loads on a landing gear using aircraft flight data with minimal additional sensors. The motivation for the project is for MBD to be able to offer its customers additional services that will reduce unscheduled maintenance of landing gears, increase airline operational efficiency and enhance the design of future landing gears. The collaboration between world leaders in their industrial fields and teams at the cutting edge of academic research is expected to result in increased jobs and business in the UK aerospace industry together with further reinforcement of the UK as a centre of excellence for innovation.

This consortium will develop manufacturing technologies to challenge the current state of the art manufacturing system for complex landing gear components to achieve Technology Readiness Level 6 (TRL6). Funding opportunity with the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) is allowing developing technologies with partners (Academia or other industrials) to keep our competitive edge in the difficult to manufacture materials. MBD is the leader in the design, manufacture and testing of Landing Gears product. By working together with the UK Advanced Manufacturing research centres (AMRC and The MTC), the consortium will provide a powerful team to deliver challenging innovation to benefits UK Aerospace industry.

The public description for this project has been requested but has not yet been received.

A consortium lead by Messier-Bugatti-Dowty, Metalysis, University of Sheffield and the Advanced Forming Research Centre is working on the FASTForge project: From rutile sand to novel titanium alloy aerospace component in 3 steps. The aim of FASTForge is to develop a novel low cost titanium forging production process, unique to the UK. The production of this aerospace grade titanium at affordable price, will be an enabler for the introduction of more titanium on aerospace components but also introduction of titanium, a light and non corrosive material, to other industries such as the rail, automotive, heavy duty construction, defence…. The project will develop the raw material process, establish how it can be embodied in a new UK supply chain, develop cost effective manufacturing techniques and prove the capability in a landing gear application