Aircraft Ground Handling

Addressing a pressing need of manufacturers, pilots and the U.S. Department of Defense.

The need was to gain a better understand how modern aircraft behave when they are not in flight, specifically the resulting high speed rollout following landing. Systems Technology bridged together our vast expertise in both ground vehicle engineering and aircraft handling qualities.

The result of this effort, begun in the late 1990s, is Systems Technology’s unique approach in building accurate models that describe the ground handling qualities of aircraft.  Rather than focus on the direct and indirect aerodynamic effects acted upon an aircraft as the primary factor to ground handling qualities, we build our model by first considering the effective properties of the aircraft’s tires as the primary factor.

Systems Technology offers a full spectrum of services in this area, including model development, analysis, computer simulation, piloted simulation, and flight test support.  The U.S. Department of the Navy has utilized System Technology’s expertise in ground handling qualities of aircraft for their primary jet trainer program. More recently, Systems Technology has applied this expertise to unmanned aerial vehicle programs.

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Development, evaluation, and fleet installation of the Stability Augmented Steering System has eliminated the ground handling deficiencies for the Navy’s jet trainer.

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