Sunday, January 8, 2012

What material is used to make the tires on airplanes?

Just curious. It always comes to mind when landing in an airplane and hearing the sound the tires make when they hit the runway and beging bouncing. How thick are they??|||Aircraft tires are made of rubber. Tires for light airplanes are about as thick as automobile tires. Heavy aircraft tires run as thick as a couple of inches.|||They are still rubber.





--Below Quoted from Wikipedia--


Aircraft tires are designed to withstand heavy loads for short durations. The number of tires required for aircraft increase with the weight of the plane. Aircraft tire tread patterns are designed to facilitate stability in high crosswind conditions, to channel away water to prevent hydroplaning, and for braking traction. Aircraft tires are usually inflated with nitrogen gas in order to minimize the expansion and contraction due to the extreme changes in temperature experienced during flight. Dry nitrogen expands at the same rate as other dry atmospheric gases, but common compressed air sources may contain some moisture, which would increase the expansion rate with temperature. Aircraft tires generally operate at high pressures, up to 200 psi (13.8 bar) for airliners and higher for business jets.





Aircraft tires also include heat fuses, which melt when a certain temperature is reached. Tires often overheat if maximum braking is applied during a rejected takeoff or an emergency landing. The fuses provide a safer failure mode, since the tire will no longer explode when overheated, but deflate in a controlled way, thus minimizing damage to aircraft or injury to people on the ground.





The main purpose of requiring that an inert gas, such as nitrogen, be used instead of air, for inflation of tires on certain transport category airplanes is prompted by at least three cases in which the oxygen in air-filled tires combined with volatile gases given off by a severely overheated tire and exploded upon reaching autoignition temperature. The use of an inert gas for tire inflation will eliminate the possibility of a tire explosion. Federal Aviation Administration 14 CFR Part 25 [Docket No. 26147; Notice No. 90-7] RIN 2120-AD37 Use of Nitrogen or Other Inert Gas for Tire Inflation in Lieu of Air


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