Aircraft Tire Spin-Up Wear Analysis through Experimental Testing and Computational Modeling

At touchdown, an aircraft tire undergoes a thermally driven ablative wear process as the tire spins-up. This spin-up event results in power spikes, on the order of megawatts, being transferred through the tire footprint. This high energy transfer rate can cause excessive, localized tire wear (flat spotting) which often leads to catastrophic tire failure. Typically, aircraft spin-up wear does not significantly contribute to aircraft tire wear; however, results presented here show that non-ideal landing conditions can cause significant flat spotting wear, especially for military aircraft. Utilizing recent tire wear testing advancements made by the United States Air Force’s (USAF) 96th Test Group, Aerospace Survivability and Safety Office (96 TG/OL-AC), Landing Gear Test Facility (LGTF); aircraft tire spin-up wear testing was completed, focusing on non-ideal landing conditions. These results show that touch-and-go type landings with bias ply tires have more susceptibility to flat spotting and failure. Additional analysis was performed for crosswind landings, which showed an increase in peak material lost with both touch-and-go and traditional sink rate landings. Coupled with the empirical results is an additional physics based analysis of the spin-up wear utilizing temperature, energy, and power responses from the tests. Finally, a Finite Element Method (FEM) computational model was utilized to simulate an aircraft’s spin-up wear. The combination of experimental results, and the FEM computational analysis, provide an increased understanding of spin-up wear as a function of non-ideal landing conditions.