Influence of Tire Surface Geometry on Braking Performance of Aircraft Tires
Abstract
Almost half of the accidents in the last 20 years have occurred during landing phase of flight. Understanding the runway-tire contact mechanics of aircraft, is essential to prevent these accidents. There are several important parameters in the runway-tire interaction during landing. Among others, the footprint area, contact pressure area, vertical deflection of tire have the most influence on the landing performance of aircraft. To find out the effects of these parameters, commonly-held empirical equations have been used and even transformed into a user-friendly calculator VBA6 based on Visual Basic. Following this first part of theoretical calculations, the runway contact mechanics of aircraft tire is analyzed numerically by 3-D models of finite elements analyses (FEA). As a part of this comparative analyses, two substantially dissimilar tire models have been chosen with rib tread and cross tread surface patterns. Former model with rib tread is preferred for almost all civil aircrafts (i.e. ultra-light, light or passenger type), using airfields with tarmac or any other stabilized runway defined as soft landing field. But later cross tread pattern design is conceived for all terrain purposes and extensively used on airplanes regardless of vehicle size during World War II due to the lack of airfield conforming to aviation standards. In addition to our theoretical and numerical analyses, experimental results from literature has been used to complete the picture of runway-tire interaction during landing. Theoretical calculations show that rib tread pattern creates a non-linear relation by contrast to linearity on cross tread pattern between landing performance parameters such as footprint area, inflation pressure, vertical deflection. An increase in the aircraft vertical speed is observed corresponding to superior inflation pressure of tires as a result of higher nose angle. Similar correlation is made for vertical load on tire – it increases with vertical landing speed reduces due to the progressively higher nose angle during landing. Finite element (FE) analyses give more coherent results (3-8.5 %) with theoretical ones especially for footprint area. These numerical analyses obtained by different FE models ensure spatial and temporal details on the deformation of tires during landing, which enhance the comprehension of phenomena.
Keywords
Braking performance, Predictive model, Surface geometry, Aircraft tire, Runway friction
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