ANGELA project is funded by the European Commission through the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking. The consortium is composed of five partners: the Italian Aerospace Research Center (Coordinator), the company Magnaghi Group, the SMEs Techno System Developments, M&S Engineering and Centre Composite, with AVIATEST as third party.
ANGELA project is aimed at designing, manufacturing, qualifying and flight-testing an innovative landing gear to be integrated on the RACER compound Technology Demonstrator, planned to be flying in 2022 (
https://www.cleansky.eu/fast-rotorcraft-iadp).
The shipsets ANGELA consortium is developing for the Work Area Leader (Airbus Helicopters) are made of the following systems and sub-systems:
- A Nose Landing Gear with retraction actuator and center lock mechanism
- Two Main Landing Gears with retraction actuators
- A Wheel (rims and tires) for each Main Landing Gear
- Two Wheels (rims and tires) for the Nose Landing Gear
- A Hydraulic brake on each main landing gear (brake control out of the scope)
- Landing gear compartment doors and associated mechanism to open/close them for each Main Landing Gear and for the Nose Landing Gear
Moreover, ANGELA is greatly focussed on developing specific innovative technologies with the ambition to go beyond the current state of art developing:
- Hydraulic retraction systems with Innovative flush doors to reduce drag during high speed missions
- Full electric retraction/extension system to achieve TRL5
- Smart Landing Gear for Hard Landing Detection based on FBG (Fiber Bragg Grating) sensor network to achieve TRL5 demonstration.
Current status (Q2 2021):
- Manufacturing in its final phase – completion of test and flight articles delivery before mid of 2021
- Qualification Phase started
- Innovative Flush doors CDR achieved
- CDR of Electro-Mechanical Actuator achieved
- PDR of Smart Landing Gear achieved
ANGELA IN A NUTSHELL:
- Innovative Landing Gear
- Clean Sky 2 project - Innovative Action
- RACER Demonstrator (Airbus Helicopters)
- Started December 2016