you seem to be disagreeing with yourself
1 Like
Ah, so you’re implying that by Goodyear saying pure nitrogen is less reactive, they’re including oxidation in that statement, and not making the same claims car repair shops make, which is mainly temperature-related, like nitrogen won’t make your tires go as flat in cold weather. I suppose that’s true. My main contact with “use nitrogen instead of air” is along these lines.
Yes.
4 Likes
I always laugh at this when at the tire shop. Regular old air is nearly 80% nitrogen on its own.
3 Likes
Nitrogen is not an inert gas. It’s just less reactive than many others. Noble gasses are inert.
1 Like
maybe I should fill the tires on my bicycle with xenon?
2 Likes
I was watching a reality TV show set in an airport when a maintenance engineer decided to change a tire. The tires are tubeless but the wheels are bolted together. You don’t push the bead across the rim of the wheel, instead you decompress the tire, separate the two sides of the wheel and pull them separately out of the tire.
4 Likes
I suspect it’s not just both the cost and weight, but also the impact on handling of having several very large gyroscopes spinning under the fuselage.
4 Likes
Its actually not a bad idea. Aircraft are already towed around the airport by diesel tugs and there have been proposals to tow them out to the runway to save on turbine fuel. If you put electric motors in the wheels, then turbine engines could be used less on the ground. Brakes could be made smaller, and regenerative braking used when landing. On takeoff, traction motors could reduce the peak output required from the gas turbines.
Hybrid and full electric aircraft are on the way, so we will see things like this in the near future I think.
2 Likes
No, xenon’s too heavy, helium will escape through the tires. Try neon.
Apparently there have been a large number of attempts to do that from WWII onward. Some with motors, some with passive air-vanes to spin the tires. All sorts of reasons that it didn’t work, but I think the commenters were speculating. (“The pilots couldn’t tell when they touched down.” Really??)
tl;dr: they are designed to withstand the forces of a hard landing
2 Likes
Or radon! If you thought a blowout was scary now…
2 Likes
Chemtrails!?! Hold my beer.
2 Likes
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
