A comparison of aircraft tire skid with initial wheel rotational speed using ANSYS transient simulation

Based on heavy aircraft main landing gear tires touchdown skidding process, patents have been registered since the 1940s to improve tire safety, decrease the substantial wear and smoke that results from every landing by spinning the rear wheels before touchdown. A single wheel has been modeled as a mass-spring-damper system using ANSYS mechanical transient simulation to analyze static and pre-rotating wheels behavior during a short period between touchdown and skidding, to spin-up to reach the equivalent of the aircraft ground speed. In this paper, a case study is presented of a Boeing 747-400 main landing gear wheel to compare the skidding distance and time between initially static and pre-spun wheels

Reduction of aircraft tyre wear by pre-rotating wheel using ANSYS mechanical transient

Heavy aircraft main landing gear tyres skid immediately after touchdown as result of the high slip ratio between the tyres and runway, which lead to tyre wear and smoke. In this paper, the tyre wear is modelled on the Archard theory using ANSYS mechanical transient, to reveal the wheel’s dynamic and the tyre tread wear. The wheel’s dynamic and the amount of wear are calculated for initially static and for pre-spun wheels in order to find the effectiveness of the technique of pre-spinning the wheel, as suggested by many patents since the early days of airplane use, in order to eliminate aircraft landing wear and smoke

Aircraft tire temperature at touchdown with wheel prerotation

Because of the skidding process that occurs when a heavy aircraft’s main landing gear tires touchdown, since the 1940s, a number of ideas have been patented to improve tire safety and decrease the substantial wear and smoke during every landing by spinning the gear wheels before touchdown. In this paper, a coupled structural–thermal transient analysis in ANSYS has been used to model a single wheel main landing gear as a mass-spring system. This model has been chosen to analyze the wheel’s dynamic behavior and tire tread temperature during the short period from static to a matching free-rolling velocity in which the wheel is forced to accelerate by the friction between the tire and ground. The tire contact surface temperature has been calculated for both the initially static and prespun wheels in order to compare the temperature levels for different initial rotations and to validate the use of the prespinning technique

The prevention of aircraft tires overheating by pre-rotating the wheels

Pre-spinning the wheel is the proposed solution to the elimination of aircraft landing smoke caused by high tire tread temperature during touchdown. In this paper, a case study of the aircraft's main landing gear has been simulated for a single wheel, using a coupled structural — thermal transient analysis in ANSYS to estimate the tire tread temperature for a typical landing and for when wheels are pre-spun, in order to validate the technique of pre-spinning the wheel; and to calculate how much pre-rotation is enough to avoid aircraft landing smoke

Comparison of aircraft tire wear with initial wheel rotational speed

The impact an aircraft has on its tires when it lands has been problematic practically since the invention of the airplane. Upon touchdown, the tires frequently smoke as rubber burns off and tire material is worn away while the tires slip up to a steady rolling speed. To minimise tire slip, torque or spin mechanisms could be added to each tire assembly to accelerate the tire to match the landing speed. Patents have been registered since the 1940s to improve tire safety and performance, decrease the substantial wear that results from every landing, and save airline companies the cost of regularly replacing expensive worn tires and to clean tarmacs. In this paper, a case study is presented of a Boeing 747-400 aircraft touching down on a runway and its wheels spinning up to match the forward speed of the aircraft as it rolls along the runway. A LuGre friction model is employed to simulate the dynamic behaviour of the tires during a typical landing, and Archard wear theory is used to compare tire wearing between initially static and pre-spun wheels. We conclude that the amount of rubber worn from the tire on each landing is proportional to the kinetic energy that the wheel must gain to reach a free-rolling velocity. Therefore tire wear is proportional to the square of the initial difference between wheel speed and horizontal aircraft velocity