Looking at the bottom of an A340 you’you well see that there are already two other sets of landing gears under the wings.
the extra landing gear allows the A340 aircraft to have a higher MTOW (maximum take-off weight). This means more passengers and cargo, plus more fuel to go a longer distance. Perfect for the long-range A340 series.
imagine the different impact of a heavy object landing with a narrow pin vs. a wide surface. The narrow pin will exert a penetrating force while the wide surface will spread out the impact and not damage the ground.
The same could be said for the A340. With only eight wheels at the landing point (four on each side), the massive A340 was impacting runways and other surfaces at airports. By adding in an extra two wheels in the middle, it spread the impacting force across more surface area thereby reducing damage to runways.
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Author – Mohamed Freihat