Miller School of Medicine >> UM Innovation >> Technology Transfer >> For Industry
 
ID# UMF-23
Pre-Rotation of Aircraft Landing Gear Wheels
Gecheng Zha
 
Problem
When landing, there is excessive wear of aircraft tires and possible tire failure. This is caused by tires skidding for a few hundred feet before they achieve full traction. Tire failure can largely be eliminated by rotating the wheels prior to touchdown.
 
Solution
In this invention, the aircraft tires’ sidewalls are modified to include an airfoil shaped impeller. The impeller blades are co-extruded from rubber material during tire manufacturing. The airfoils are aligned with the relative flow at an optimum angle of attack in the front portion of the tire to maximize the force and movement generating area, which covers the front half circumference of the tire.  All of the previous techniques only have a force generating area located in the lowermost small portion of the tire. Wind tunnel tests were conducted and confirmed that this technology is superior to the other techniques that cover only the lower half of the tire. Two major advantages of this invention are:
  • The location of the impeller blades farther away from the wheel axis provides higher torque than in the case where impeller blades are mounted on a wheel hub. The wind tunnel tests proved that the generated torque is sufficient to spin the wheels at typical aircraft landing speed.
  • Impeller blades extruded from rubber compounds provide significant weight savings compared to the configuration when metal blades are attached to the wheel rim.
 
Competitive Advantage
The present invention increases aircraft tires service life and improves safety by reducing the possibility of tires’ failure during landing.
 
Applications
The invention is applicable to aircraft landing gear.
 
Patent Status
International patent application PCT/US2006/011371 entitled “LANDING GEAR WHEELS WITH SIDE-MOUNTED AIRFOILS” was filed on March 30, 2007.
 
Licensing Opportunity
We are seeking a commercialization partner with capabilities in product development, sales, and marketing. An exclusive worldwide license is available.
 
About the Inventors
Dr. Zha, is an Associate Professor at the University of Miami (UM) since 2001. He has extensive experience on aircraft aerodynamics, flow control, wind tunnel tests, turbomachinery, propeller aerodynamics, landing gear aerodynamics, Computational Fluid Dynamics algorithm development and application, design optimization. Dr. Zha's research at UM has been funded by AFOSR (Air Force Office of Scientific Research), NASA, ARO (Army Research Office) NRC (National Research Council), AFRL (Air Force Research Lab), and Siemens. Before Dr. Zha joined UM, he had extensive experience within the aerospace industry (GE Aircraft Engines, Pratt & Whitney) and government lab (AFRL).  Dr. Zha received his Ph.D. degree from University of Montreal supported by the Quebec government FCAR award for outstanding Ph.D. students. In the spring of 2000, Dr. Zha studied at MIT as a special student in the Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Dr. Zha has published 18 journal papers, 1 book chapter, and 37 conference papers.
 
Selected References
Zha, G.-C and Paxton, C. and Conley, A. and Wells, A. and Carroll, B. "Effect of Injection Slot Size on High Performance Co-Flow Jet Airfoil" AIAA Journal of Aircraft, Vol. 43, No. 4, pp987-995, 2006 Zha, G.-C. and Paxton, C. "A Novel Flow Control Method for Airfoil Performance Enhancement Using Co-Flow Jet", Applications of Circulation Control Technologies, AIAA Book Series, Progress in Aeronautics and Astronautics, Vol. 214, 2006, Chapter 10, p. 293-314, Editors: R. D. Joslin and G. S. Jones Chen, X.-Y. and Zha, G.-C. and Yang, M.-T. "Numerical Simulation of 3-D Wing Flutter with Fully Coupled Fluid-Structural Interaction ", To appear in the Journal of Computers & Fluids, 2006 Chen, X. and Zha, G.-C., "Implicit Application of Non-Reflective Boundary Conditions for Navier-Stokes Equations in Generalized Coordinates ", International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids, Vol. 50, No. 7, pp767-793, 2006 Chen, X. and Zha, G.-C., "Fully Coupled Fluid-Structural Interactions Using an Efficient High Solution Upwind Scheme", Journal of Fluid and Structure, Vol. 20, No. 8, Nov. 2005, pp1105-1125 Zha, G.-C., "A Low Diffusion Efficient Upwind Scheme " , AIAA Journal, Vol.43, No.5, pp 1137-1140, 2005 Hu, Z. and Zha, G.-C., "Calculations of 3D Compressible Using an Efficient Low Diffusion Upwind Scheme",International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids, Vol. 47, pp253-269, Nov. 2004 Zha, G.-C., "Boundary Layer Loss Mechanism and Justification of Wall Functions for Turbulence Modeling" , AIAA Journal, Vol. 42, No. 11, Nov. 2004, p2387-2390 Zha, G.-C. and Hu, Z., "Calculation of Transonic Internal Flows Using an Efficient High Resolution Upwind Scheme" , AIAA Journal, Jan. 2004
 
 

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