Incident Overview
A pilot reported that during a landing on Taylor Mountain, the touchdown was harder than usual. However, the pilot stated that he did not believe the landing was severe enough to cause the landing gear to collapse. Despite this assessment, the landing gear strut failed during the landing.
Examination of Landing Gear
The failed landing gear strut tube was visually examined. The fracture surface showed no striation marks, indicating that the failure was not due to progressive fatigue cracking. The interior of the tube exhibited no pitting and no large rust spots, suggesting that corrosion was not a contributing factor. Additionally, the tube walls were uniformly thick around the fracture surface, meaning that the failure was not associated with localized thinning or manufacturing irregularities.
The investigation did not identify any pre-existing defects in the strut tube that would have predisposed it to failure under normal landing loads.