Trajectory-Control-Based Analysis of Winch Traction Dynamics in Ship-Borne Aircraft Operations

Aiming to address the problems of the violent fluctuation of winch traction rope and tire forces and the high safety risk caused by coupling ship motions (rolling, pitching, and heaving), wind loads, and deck space limitations in carrier-based aircraft, this paper focuses on a multi-winch traction system on a small deck. A fully coupled dynamic model of an aircraft landing gear–tire–rope–winch system is constructed, ADAMS2020 and MATLAB/Simulink (MATLAB R2021b) co-simulations are used to develop the three-winch and five-winch traction system models, and a Fiala tire model and a telescopic landing gear model are adopted to build a precise mechanical model of the aircraft. The PID control strategy is proposed, based on the Bessel curve, to control the driving trajectory of the aircraft, and the quantitative influence of ship motion, winch number, and preset trajectory on traction dynamic characteristics is systematically studied. Compared to without trajectory control, the peak force of the winch rope before the start-up phase of the three-winch system is reduced by 54.9%, and the five-winch system is reduced by 57.6%. The fluctuation amplitude of the lateral force of the rear wheel is greater than that of the front wheel, up to a maximum of 215% of the front wheel. The correlation coefficient between the theoretical model and the simulation results is 0.91~0.97, and the error is less than 12%. The PID control strategy based on the Bessel trajectory can significantly improve the steadiness and security of the carrier-based aircraft winch traction system on a small deck. The study delivers the requisite theory and engineering means for the optimized design of carrier-based aircraft traction systems.