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Aviation experts baffled after British Airways A380 lands at Heathrow with a SQUARE tire
An astonishing picture has emerged of a square-shaped tyre on a British Airways A380 that touched down at London's Heathrow Airport. (www.dailymail.co.uk) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
More astonishing is the explanation in the article, they talk but make no sense about anything and then state some opinion on how the wheel holds weight. Don't know who wrote the article but needs to find another job say in cleaning toilets.
Guess #1: Tire lost pressure at or after takeoff as advertised possibly due to bead leak...as aircraft climbed, outside pressure decreased and inside tire differential pressure increased enough to reseal bead and hold static pressure...as aircraft descended, outside pressure increased pushing in on the tire causing it to buckle in geometrically to a square. By luck of where one square side ended up, I don't think the tire ever rotated at touchdown. This thought comes to me due to the experience of having a round water bottle that I put the lid on at altitude turn into a mostly square bottle after decent. Strange things happen.8>)
I agreed but with a ?: during descent why didn't outside (ambient) pressure differential create a 'reverse' leak path? Clearly there is negative pressure differential on the tire as evidenced by the deformation. As for the shape - that's minimizing volume with a constant surface area while also minimizing surface tension: tires have a higher surface tension than water bottles (Young's modulus actually).
First off, I am not an engineer or physicist. I just like to use my brain and think about things. My thought is that it was a bead leak that somehow resealed due to extreme pressure and temperature changes. There would be no reverse leak, at least not for very long, because pressure pushing from outside the tire would force the sidewalls out. I agree also that a multi-ply tire is not a water bottle. At the same time, the water bottle deformed from a pressure differential resulting from a 5500' cabin altitude change. A 40,000' change would put quite a bit more pressure on an object. I may be way off base but it still sounds better than what was presented in the story.
Looks like tire was flat with a small leak, and at high altitude remaining air was evacuated from tire, thus the square shape... when it shrunk, it sealed the leak off and kept its shape... my opinion...
I think this is a reasonable and plausible explanation.