Tire-Wear Control in Aircraft via Active Braking

In ground vehicles, tire consumption is, in general, mainly due to the mileage covered, and in fact, the life span of tires, at least in common situations, is rather long. In the aeronautical context, and for aircraft in particular, instead, tire consumption plays a crucial role in determining the maintenance costs. This is due to the fact that, in aircraft braking, nearly all maneuvers activate the antiskid controller, which remains in use for long time intervals. In ground vehicles, instead, anti-lock braking systems (ABS) are usually active for short time intervals that cover a part of the braking maneuvers only. Thus, tire consumption in the automotive context is usually studied under constant speed assumptions. In this article, we formulate a tire consumption model that encompasses explicitly the wheel acceleration/deceleration dynamics and show that tire wear can be directly related to the antiskid controller parameters. Based on this, a sensitivity analysis of tire consumption versus braking performance is carried out, showing that, using an appropriate antiskid control approach, one may directly formulate the braking problem as a tire consumption regulation one, being sure that the resulting braking performance will have an a priori guaranteed outcome. The tire-wear model is also validated in an experimental setting.