Hi
I am looking to build a trike unit for a microlight aircraft as in the photo.
but using CF tubes in place of the aluminium tubes.
Some tubes needs to be rigid with good tensile and compressive strength but with little or no flexibility.
The pair of undercarriage legs, 1 meter each, need to flex about 3 to 4 inches when landing.
Total weight including pilot is 170 kg.
Recommendations please on the type of CF tubes by Easy Composites.
Also is there a website or calculator to figure out how much a particular type of tube will flex for a given load?
Thanks!

I would be looking at our Roll Wrapped Carbon Fibre  range of tubes for this application.  Mechanical data is available for the tubes which means you can calculate the deflection based on the loads you are likely to experience. Remember that the static load weight you give will be considerably less than the experienced loading on initial landing impact so you will need to take this into account in your calculations.


Warren Penalver
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Support Assistant