Take Care of Your Brakes
All Brakes are subject to wear. Some brakes may also experience oxidation which can lead to brake rupture. In the case of a brake rupture or if brakes are too worn, the aircraft braking performance is reduced. This can result in a runway overrun if the full braking capacity is required such as during a rejected takeoff with an aircraft weight at or close to the maximum takeoff weight. Brake rupture can also lead to damage that can cause a brake fire due to hydraulic fluid coming into contact with hot parts.This article describes carbon wear and oxidation phenomena. It recalls the maintenance procedures used to identify worn or oxidized brakes, flight crew procedures, and good practices to prevent brake wear and oxidation.
Take Care of the Wheel Tie Bolts
A significant number of missing wheel tie bolts have been reported to Airbus over the last 5 years. A few of these reports have described significant damage to the wheel or brakes. Carefully checking the condition of the wheel tie bolts during aircraft walkarounds can allow detection of missing or damaged bolts and help to prevent serious incidents in service or during maintenance. Strictly observing the preventive maintenance practices, including planned inspection intervals, ensure that any damaged wheel tie bolts are replaced before they are at risk of failing.
Using Aircraft as a Sensor on Contaminated Runways
In any analysis of aviation accidents, Runway Excursions (RE) are usually identified as the top cause of aircraft hull losses. Many of these accidents occur on runways where braking performance is degraded by runway surface contaminants.Airbus and its subsidiary NAVBLUE have developed a new technology to use the aircraft itself as a sensor to measure the available runway braking action, and subsequently share that data to the benefit of oncoming traffic.
Landing on contaminated runways
Landing performance is a function of the exact landing runway conditions at the time of landing. A simple statement for a more complex reality. Indeed, knowing what exact contamination is or remains on the runway at a given point in time is often challenging.
Airbus Brake Testing
Regulatory aircraft performance is certified as a set of performance models and aircraft physical characteristics that are built and validated from flight test data. While the primary purpose of these models has always been to allow computation of aircraft performance for dispatch, the models used to determine the in-flight landing distances during approach preparation are derived from the same testing. Part of this model, affecting both the accelerate-stop computation at take-off and the landing distance computation, are the characteristics of the braking system installed on the aircraft.This article explains which flight tests are involved in the identification of the system characteristics and how they are conducted.