Foreign Object Damage to Tires Operating in a Wartime Environment

摘要

Over the past 5 years, various efforts addressed the problems associated withForeign Object Damage (FOD) to aircraft operating in a debris strewn environment following an airbase attack. These efforts include engine object ingestion probability, engine (FOD) damage, aircraft damage from tire lofted foreign objects, external stores FOD, tire cutting FOD, and the operability of tires subjected to FOD. This report was written to provide a summary and preliminary assessment to the tire cutting FOD portion of the overall post-attack FOD program. The report summarizes the approach and results of tests on over 126 aircraft tires which were tested in a simulated post-attack environment under full scale test conditions. Tests tires included F-16 main and nose, and an F-4 nose tire setup. Test variables included speed, load, size, pressure, tire type, turning, water effects, debris type, debris size, debris distribution, braking, and combined variable effects. Analysis consideration involved cut types, cut depths, number of cuts, cut/hit probabilities, tire failures, and aircraft operational impacts.