December 09, 2024

How Such Small Tires Can Land a Huge Plane

11 minutes

Airplanes are mysterious things: unimaginably heavy metal giants soaring through the sky, jam-packed not only with people but also all kinds of electronic gizmos. But look at the airplane's tires compared to the plane’s body – they're tiny! How can they withstand all that weight and speed?

Let's check out what's happening when a plane is preparing to land on the runway. All 300 tons of your airplane touch the ground while still going 170 mph. Imagine your typical 2-story house, fully furnished, dropping to the ground as fast as a flying arrow - that must be quite the impact! And still, those tiny little tires don’t pop under the tremendous pressure?

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TIMESTAMPS:

Why pilots point the aircraft nose toward the sky before landing 1:17

What's inside airplane tires? 2:21

And what makes them so strong? 3:54

What happens when one of the tires fails 4:20

Why plane tires are so tiny and skinny 5:34

Hydroplaning 7:20

#planes #aviation #brightside

SUMMARY:

Pilots must point the aircraft nose toward the sky just before landing so that they don’t stall the machine.

To make an airplane tire, producers use a mix of different kinds of synthetic rubber. It makes aircraft tires so strong that each of them can easily deal with a 38-ton load.

The gas that fills aircraft tires is nitrogen. It doesn't react with rubber, which makes it a much safer choice for airplanes.

The pressure in plane tires is 6 times bigger than the pressure in your car tires. It's 200 psi, and that's what you’d feel if you took a dive 450 ft underwater.

There can be plenty of wheels on large airplanes, like an Airbus A380 or Boeing 747. And if one of the tires fails, the plane will still land safely.

When a plane touches the ground, its tires aren't rolling at first - they're just skidding. In other words, the plane is dragging them along the runway until it slows down enough for the wheels to be able to rotate.

Larger tires would be pointless since they wouldn't make landing more effective or safer.

After plane tires are produced, they always get tested. Manufacturers create computer simulations that check how tires will behave if they're pushed past their speed limit or get overloaded.

And still, airplane tires aren't entirely safe from bursting. Accidents did happen in the past, and planes did skid off runways because of one of the tires exploding mid-landing.

Hydroplaning is a situation that occurs when the runway is covered with a layer of water preventing a landing plane from braking and stopping in time.

The aircraft just keeps skidding forward, unable to find traction.

That’s why some airports have grooves on the runway. Water flows into these grooves, making the surface not so slippery and dropping the chances of hydroplaning.

Music by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/

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