Anti Lock Airplane Wheels

I found this video on Digg showing the airport runway rubber removal process and it had me thinking. Would it make sense for airplanes to have anti lock wheels?

Could airplane wheels spin up to match their landing speed? I wonder if it would help a plane land in a shorter distance? It would be similar to the anti lock brakes we have on cars. It would eliminate the skid marks we have on runways and it would allow the wheels to last longer.

I thought maybe have electric powered wheels could be used, maybe they could be used to taxi around the airport. I wondered if that would also save of fuel use as well but I bet those powered wheels wouldn’t be powerful enough and if they were it’d make the plane to heavy.

2nd idea could the wheels spin using wind power. Maybe the wheels are connected to a device which captures the wind passing under the plane and transfer that energy into wheel spin. The wheels could then have a governor which controls spin to match ground speed. This additional drag would also help slow the plane down.

 

picture reference: https://pixabay.com/en/plane-landing-gear-airplane-wheel-34036/

One Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *