Correction of Aircraft Empty Weight CG due to LRU Modification

Abstract

LRU (Line Replacement Unit) modifications are often required for military aircraft due to aging. Recently, LRU modifications were proceeded for KA-O (Armed Airborne Controller) by replacing the ejection seat and adding avionic equipment, which made the aircraft's operational CG (Center of Gravity) on fuel consumption curve become out of the range of the specification requested. The off-ranged CG should be corrected by introducing an appropriate method. This study proposes a procedure for revising and verifying the empty weight CG altered due to LRU modification for small military aircraft (e.g., KA-O). In the proposed method, first, the change of empty weight CG of KA-O due to the LRU modifications is comprehensively examined. Then, several ballast masses are added to the engine mount strut to restore the empty weight CG on the fuel consumption curve to a safe operational range. The installations are verified via stress and fatigue analysis for various operating conditions. Considering that open information is not very available for the revision of empty weight CG, this study is valuable because it presents an established procedure for correcting and verifying empty weight CG during aircraft modification.