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United
States Military Academy
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Baragona Award - 2004 |
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The 2004 Baragona Award winners were Paul Neal, Amber Raub, Ben Recla, and Fritz Schultes for their work in designing a debris deflector for C-130 nose landing gear. The C-130 Hercules Nose Landing Gear Debris Deflector project was a continuation from the previous year’s effort sponsored by the U.S. Air Force C-130 Office. Under the guidance of faculty advisor, Dr. Chris Conley, Cadets Fritz Schultes, Ben Recla, Amber Raub and Paul Neal developed a novel concept for a deflector to prevent damage to the C-130 aircraft caused by debris thrown up by the nose landing gear. Their design will push debris down and out away from the fuselage, and will be retractable with the nose gear. Based upon what could be found in the literature, this is the first nose-gear deflector design that purposefully deflects debris out to the side, as well as down. Rigid-body dynamics modeling indicates that the debris will clear the fuselage as it travels out to the side, but will safely pass under the wings and propellers. Field testing of the design resulted in deflection angles consistent with the predictions. Field testing also supported the finite element model predictions of only localized yielding for impacts of typical-size rocks being thrown at the deflector at velocities expected in service. |
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