Powered wheel rotation
Introduce the horizontal component through a powered rotation arrangement, adding equipment and integration requirements.
More powered equipment ← All projects
01 / Mechanical design
Nose Landing Gear Test Rig
Rethinking the landing test.
A design challenge in making a complex test more practical—through the mechanism, the testing approach, and the decisions connecting them.
The decision
Replace powered wheel rotation with an inclined impact-plate approach.
The evidence
First of nine teams; a modeled and analyzed concept, not an experimentally validated rig.
Nose landing gear test rig
Separate the lift.
Control the motion.
Rethink the impact.
01
Portal structure
Frame and guided travel
02
Lead-screw lift
Positioning before release
03
Test interface
Developed through concept comparison
Original development assembly, November 2025. This intermediate view predates the final inclined-plate configuration.
1st / 9
Competing design teams
3
Team members, led by me
≈33%
Lower estimated rig cost*
*Calculated design-stage estimate documented in my latest CV, relative to the alternative configuration. Not a measured manufacturing saving.
01 / The challenge
More than a
vertical drop.
The Mechanical Engineering Design II challenge, proposed by the Prince Sultan Defense Studies and Research Center, called for a UAV nose landing gear testing concept.
The rig had to bring together a load-bearing structure, controlled lifting, guided movement and an impact interface. The difficult part was deciding which complexity was essential to the test—and which could be avoided.
I led our three-person team through concept comparison, SolidWorks modeling and mechanical analysis. Our entry placed first among nine competing teams.
02 / The key design decision
Change the approach,
not just the component.
Inclined impact plate
Use the contact geometry to introduce a horizontal force component. The innovation was applying this testing approach, not inventing the inclined plate.
A different route to the test objectiveA design concept for evaluation. It does not establish experimental equivalence to a fully validated landing test.
03 / Mechanical architecture
Give every mechanism
a clear job.
Lift and position
The lead screw raises the moving assembly. Its role is lifting and positioning, rather than carrying the impact event or acting as the release mechanism.
Guide the travel
The portal frame and vertical guide arrangement constrain movement. Separating guidance from lifting makes the load paths easier to reason about.
Support the test interface
The base and positioning structure connect the test region to the frame. Component calculations inform whether a promising concept can carry the required loads.
04 / Analysis & judgement
A calculation should
challenge the design.
The analysis covered lifting, load capacity and structural feasibility. It also exposed a mismatch between increased test-load requirements and parts of the proposed frame capacity.
That finding matters more than an unqualified claim of success: the affected members would need further sizing before fabrication. The report’s screw calculations examine the lifting mechanism separately, including self-locking behavior.
What the project established
A modeled assembly, compared alternatives and a mechanically reasoned concept. It was not fully manufactured or experimentally validated.
The takeaway
The strongest improvement
can be a simpler question.
Instead of only optimizing a conventional test rig, we asked whether a different testing arrangement could meet the design intent with fewer powered components. Leading that process strengthened both my mechanical judgement and my ability to coordinate a team around a clear decision.