PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Ryanair incident Ciampino.
View Single Post
Old 10th Nov 2008, 21:01
  #142 (permalink)  
MD11Engineer
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: CGN, EDDK
Posts: 91
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
The LH main gear collapsed inwards and forward. The part you see sticking up from the wing IS the upper end of the strut, plus possibly the landing gear beam.
Unless the fwd trunnion bearing housing or the landing gear beam attachment fitting got torn off the rear spar (or the lower wing skin fwd of the rear spar got damaged by the landing gear leg), the wing should be intact.
The upper surface of the wing above the landing gear leg (spanning the area between the rear spar and the landing gear beam) is covered by a simple composite panel, which most likely got destroyed.
Since the design philosophy is that in case of a crash the attachments to the wing, like landing gear legs, flaps or engine pylons should rather tear off than having the integrity of the wing box (which after all acts as a fuel tank) compromised, the attachment points are designed as the weakest spots (e.g. by use of fuse pins), it is quite likely that the wing box did not get damaged at all.
MD11Engineer is offline