Originally Posted by
Uplinker
In a crabbed landing, if someone doesn't decrab properly, a gear that lands front wheels first is going to put huge twisting strain on the gear leg and hinge bearings, because it will try to steer away from the runway centre line, and the forward motion will try to twist the gear round.
If the gear lands trailing wheels first, this strain will be much less, since the aircraft wheels will simply be pulled into line to follow the direction of travel as the aircraft follows the centreline.
Imagine pushing a wheelbarrow in front of you that is not straight, and the force required to
I thought about this post for a while, and don't see that this is true. Let's say you land with the nose cabbed to the left. If the front of the bogey touches down first, the gear leg will twist counterclockwise as seen from above. If the rear touches down first, it will twist clockwise. But in both cases the angle of contact will pull the gear leg to the left, which is behind the CG, therefore stabilizing the plane in yaw. And in neither case would the leg twisting moment be greater than the other, at last for any reason that I can see.