The main components of a landing-gear structure are wheels and brakes, axles, bogie beams (a.k.a. truck beams), shock absorbers (a.k.a. shock struts), and drag and side braces. Primary design considerations on landing gear include maximum sink speed, spin up, spring back, lateral drift (on landing), towing, jacking, turning, braked roll, taxi, rebound, pivoting (main landing gear only), crashworthiness and fatigue.

Secondary loads include retraction/extension, aerodynamic loads, lock/unlock loads and emergency extension. In addition, nose landing-gear specific forces include dynamic breaking, nose-gear yaw and steering. Alloys used in these applications must have high strengths, normally between 260-300 ksi (1,792-2,068 MPa). By Carmine Filice, Daniel H. Herring, Paul Vanderpol