Aircraft Tire-Runway Friction on Wet and Grooved Pavement Surfaces: Models and Experiments

Aircraft tire-runway interactions is critical for safe operation of aircraft at landing and take-off phases. Transverse grooves are built on airport pavement surface to help drain any possible accumulated water and mitigate aircraft overrun due to reduced friction coefficient on raining conditions. It is unclear how the grooving runway configurations can maintain and even increase the skid resistance. We present a modeling and experimental study to evaluate tire-runway friction on wet, grooved pavement surfaces. The model captures the tire-runway interlock force that contributes to the total tire-runway friction. The model also incorporates the effect of the drainage capacity of the grooves on the tire-pavement contact patch size. The total friction force is obtained with the integrated interlock effect and the LuGre friction model. Comparisons between the model prediction and the experimental results from an indoor tire-runway testbed are presented to validate and demonstrate the proposed friction force model.