LongbowPilot From United States of America, joined Jan 2005, 577 posts, RR: 4 Posted (7 years 10 months 5 days 16 hours ago) and read 2418 times:
Sometime ago I viewed pictures of the A380 gear trucks. They were showing the beating the tires were taking during turn, because Airbus elected to forgo the steerable rear trucks to save weight and complexity in the system.
EGNR From United Kingdom, joined Feb 2004, 503 posts, RR: 0 Reply 1, posted (7 years 10 months 5 days 15 hours ago) and read 2360 times:
The main undercarriage of the A380 has steerable body gear, but the wing mounted gear is non-steeringl. The photos you refer to were taken at an extreme ground handling test, where the rear gear steering system was fully disabled. A ground tug was then hooked up the the nose gear and used to pull the A380 through severe turns.
The aircraft passed the tests - the photos simply show deformation of the tyres on the gear that was scrubbed sideways across the ground.
Searching brought up these two threads on the topic: Link one Link two
And an external source (quoted in the second link) Link three
Leezyjet From United Kingdom, joined Oct 2001, 4041 posts, RR: 55 Reply 2, posted (7 years 10 months 5 days 15 hours ago) and read 2311 times:
Quoting LongbowPilot (Thread starter): Sometime ago I viewed pictures of the A380 gear trucks. They were showing the beating the tires were taking during turn, because Airbus elected to forgo the steerable rear trucks to save weight and complexity in the system.
"A380 LANDING GEAR TESTING
On-going tests of the landing gears on the first A380 has reached a significant milestone with successful retraction tests of the body landing gear.
The retraction tests, which involved using a local power supply to withdraw both sets of body landing gear into the aircraft’s fuselage, were the first time the gears had been tested in-situ on the aircraft.
As well as demonstrating the smooth working of the landing gears, the tests also enabled engineers to make slight adjustments to the landing gear doors in a closed position.
The ground testing of the body, nose and wing landing gears of the first aircraft is being performed with the aircraft jacked in the equipping station of the A380 final assembly line in Toulouse. At the same time, the landing gears for the second flight test development aircraft have also been fitted in preparation for testing.
The retraction test is part of several weeks of aircraft systems testing which includes retraction and extensions of all landing gears and commissioning of the braking and steering systems of the gears. Tests examine the performance of the electric and hydraulic systems governing the gears. A particular feature of the A380 landing gear system is weight saving electric uplock systems for all gears and doors. Previous Airbus aircraft have used hydraulic uplock systems.
Future milestones will be testing of the nose landing gear and body landing gear steering systems."
taken from the A380 Navigator website (via www.airbus.com), note the last line of text. The A380 does have steerable main body gear.
"She Rolls, 45 knots, 90, 135, nose comes up to 20 degrees, she's airborne - She flies, Concorde Flies"
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