I used to watch a lot of airplane landings and take-off. My favourite moment is when airplane tyres touch the ground. Friction produces a lot of heat and hence, smoke.
But i wonder, why not pilot start rotating wheels before landing and match the speed of wheels such that it doesn’t cause any friction.
In: 111
It has been tried by non other than the underfunded u.s. military. /s
Result: Not worth the tradeoffs in complexity, maintenance etc., as noted below.
Source: former military pilot [F15], airline Captain [twin aisle currently], 20,000+ hours [if you count all of my rocket tricycle stuff as a kid], hanging out as El Supreme O.
Years ago I came up with the idea of using slots in aircraft wheels to spin them up before landing. Think of a kids pinwheel. This was a solution to tire rubber build up on runways. I taught myself how to do a patent search to see if anyone had already thought this one up. This was pre-internet, so it was a micro-fische search at the Fort Lauderdale patent repository. (Yeah, I’m old.) The pinwheel idea dates back to around 1920. Later iterations included shapes cut into the tires, and more recently pneumatic systems with RPM calculated using radar sensors. I think that was a Pan Am filing from the 1980’s. But none of these ideas were implemented. Why? After much thought I recognized that a spinning aircraft tire would act as a gyroscope. Multiple heavy tires spinning at high speed would resist crab angle changes on aircraft approach. Even worse, the torque would be below the belly of the plane creating an additional balance/torque issue into the landing equation. This would make the pilots job more difficult at the most critical part of the landing process, touchdown. At that point the risks outweigh the reward and its cheaper and easier to just change tires.
Latest Answers