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Knowledge of the tire-wheel interface pressure distribution is necessary for aircraft wheel design and analysis. A finite element code, ANTWIL, has been developed recently which makes tractable the determination of the tire-wheel interface loads from experimentally obtained strains. Motivated by computational considerations, ANTWIL employs an asymmetrically loaded axisymmetric finite element model. Previously reported results have shown numerically that the axisymmetric assumption is well-justified. Data from a strain-roll test conducted at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for an F-16 Block30 main landing gear wheel were obtained and analyzed via ANTWIL to recover the associated tire-wheel interface loads. Strain comparisons are shown to illustrate the validity of the recovered loads. Comparison of the load profiles for radial and bias ply tires is given and discussed.

Knowledge of the tire-wheel interface pressure distribution is necessary for aircraft wheel design and analysis. A finite element code, ANTWIL, has been developed recently which makes tractable the determination of the tire-wheel interface loads from experimentally obtained strains. ANTWIL employs an asymmetrically loaded axisymmetric finite element model. This assumption is motivated by computational considerations. Herein three-dimensional finite element models of the F-16, Block 50, main landing gear wheel are developed using the commercial CAE Aries package. One of the models is a detailed representation of the actual wheel; the other is a similar three dimensional model but with the asymmetries removed. A comparison of strain responses from these models is used to validate the axisymmetric assumption on which the ANTWIL code is based. “Experimental” strains obtained from the three-dimensional analysis were used as input to ANTWIL to perform the load recovery.