We saw lots of hot brakes and clamping forces at work during Hot Rod Drag Week, LS Fest, and the NHRA Dodge Nationals, but even the big binders on the pro touring and drag cars have nothing on the stoppers that air liners use. Hauling all that weight down to a stop in the amount of time you have before running off the end of a runway is not the job of weak suck parts. Due to the fact that airplanes that run off of runways and injure people don’t help sales for their manufacturers, the companies building these massive planes go through extreme measures to test them. This video shows one of those tests and it is pretty amazing.
The brakes being tested are for an Airbus A380-800, which weighs in at more than one million pounds. The object of the test was to have the plane stop itself at landing speed in about 1200 meters (roughly 3600 feet). Using a massive flywheel and a tire and brake setup, the test requires the brakes to do the job exactly as they would have to on the ground.
When the huge flywheel comes into contact with the tire to simulate touchdown note the distortion from the force and then pay close attention to the brake caliper and rotor because they really start working their asses off and quickly heat up to something akin to the surface of the sun.
This is bad ass engineering at work!
worked with a B707-320B some years back. had no thrust reversers on the engines but really good brakes., eight million btus on heat absorption and dissipation with and antilock system also. segmented rotor disc brakes. hauled that 440,000 lb airplane down to zero in almost nothing flat. two brakes on each wheel. awesome braking performance. tires were always the limiting factor. unlike the one demonstrated to destruction on the video, the boeing brakes never caught fire on us. did have to leave the gear down to cool the brakes after long taxi stints at some airfields as the engines idle thrust was always accelerating us to high speed on the taxi and using brakes to control speed was necessary.
one million pound aircraft takes a lot of friction to stop it that short. I was surprised the tire on the test stand did not rupture the thermal plugs. WOW!