uplander
2006-12-13, 05:33 PM
Here's something I've always thought about but never took the time to sit down and design, patent, sell, and make a million bucks on. Probably because it won't work, so please prove me right. (Apologies if this has been discussed before.)
You know all that rubber that coats the two ends of the runways at the touchdown points, where the tires make that beautiful puff of smoke. How much life does each landing take out of those tires? To avoid that, wouldn't it be logical to have the wheels rotating at approximately ground speed just before touch down? Then the rubber burn would just be due to the difference in wheel speed to ground speed.
I never see any wheels rotating just before landing, so I figure the brakes must be on. But why? One way to get them to rotate would be to build simple fan blades into the rims of the wheels, if there's room. The blade angle would have to be calculated to make the air spin the outer edge of the wheels at the air speed. I'm not sure if it can even get that fast, but even close enough to the air speed would be good.
OK, so why wouldn't this work?
You know all that rubber that coats the two ends of the runways at the touchdown points, where the tires make that beautiful puff of smoke. How much life does each landing take out of those tires? To avoid that, wouldn't it be logical to have the wheels rotating at approximately ground speed just before touch down? Then the rubber burn would just be due to the difference in wheel speed to ground speed.
I never see any wheels rotating just before landing, so I figure the brakes must be on. But why? One way to get them to rotate would be to build simple fan blades into the rims of the wheels, if there's room. The blade angle would have to be calculated to make the air spin the outer edge of the wheels at the air speed. I'm not sure if it can even get that fast, but even close enough to the air speed would be good.
OK, so why wouldn't this work?