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Destination Tomorrow - DT4 - ALDF

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Subido el 28 de mayo de 2007 por EducaMadrid

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NASA Destination Tomorrow Segment explaining how new tire tread designs and road surfaces are tested at the Aircraft Landing Dynamics Facility.

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One of the most important components of any vehicle is its tires. 00:00:00
Unfortunately, tires are often overlooked and poorly maintained. 00:00:04
Worn treads or even bald tires can lead to hydroplaning on wet surfaces. 00:00:08
When this occurs, control of the vehicle is lost. 00:00:12
NASA Langley Research Center has a special facility that makes traveling safer 00:00:16
by testing new tire tread designs and road surfaces. 00:00:20
Paula Baden finds out more about NASA's Aircraft Landing Dynamics Facility. 00:00:24
Music 00:00:28
Have you ever heard this sound? 00:00:34
It's the impact of tires over grooved pavement. 00:00:38
Developed at NASA Langley, grooved pavement limits hydroplaning on wet roads and runways, 00:00:42
which helps automobiles, planes, and people travel safer. 00:00:48
Most of this research is performed at a unique facility called the Aircraft Landing Dynamics Facility, or ALDEF. 00:00:52
Besides developing grooved pavement, ALDEF tests aircraft wheels, tires, and advanced landing systems. 00:00:58
The research gathered here develops safer roads, runways, and pedestrian walkways. 00:01:05
I spoke to Bob Daugherty of NASA Langley Research Center to find out more about this one-of-a-kind facility. 00:01:10
Well, the ALDEF is a unique facility that NASA uses to test landing gear components, tires, 00:01:16
and even advanced landing gear concepts at full-scale conditions. 00:01:22
The biggest advantage is this facility allows us to simulate full-scale conditions 00:01:26
where it might otherwise be dangerous for a pilot or an aircraft to encounter. 00:01:30
For example, if we tested this tire and it failed, here at our facility we've only lost a tire. 00:01:35
We haven't risked any injury to a pilot or done any damage to a real aircraft, which gets very expensive. 00:01:42
And, of course, being able to run tests over and over quickly at low cost gets you a lot of data in a very short period of time. 00:01:48
The key to doing that is getting whatever component we're looking at up to speed 00:01:55
and making it think that it's on an aircraft or spacecraft. 00:01:59
We do that by taking this 60-ton carriage, propelling it up to the speed we want. 00:02:03
We can get up to 250 miles per hour, and it only takes two seconds to do that. 00:02:07
And then landing this tire, for example, on a runway, 00:02:11
applying forces to it, steering it, and measuring those forces 00:02:14
so that they can be simulated elsewhere in pilot training simulators and so forth. 00:02:18
Well, Bob, tell me, how exactly do you propel the carriage? 00:02:23
Well, that's really the neatest thing about this facility. 00:02:26
Believe it or not, we use a giant squirt gun. 00:02:29
We've got a pressurized water tank at the end of the track with a real high-tech valve. 00:02:32
We actually shoot an 18-inch stream of water at a bucket at the back end of the carriage, 00:02:37
and that actually gives us the energy to launch the carriage. 00:02:43
Now, what's unique about this is it's low cost. 00:02:51
If we were a rocket, we'd have to carry our fuel with us, and that's very expensive to do. 00:02:55
But since we're using low-cost, low-efficiency water power, 00:03:01
we store all of our pressurized water at the end of the track and shoot it at the carriage. 00:03:04
All we have to do is pay for the water and the electricity, and it only costs about $25 for each run. 00:03:08
So at the speed of 250 miles an hour, how do you stop this carriage? 00:03:14
Well, at the end of our track, we have an arrestment system, 00:03:19
and that arrestment system consists of five cables that stretch across the track, 00:03:22
and we have a nose block on the front of the carriage that lines up with those cables. 00:03:26
So as the carriage continues to travel, 00:03:30
the cables allow us to gradually dissipate the carriage energy in the last few hundred feet. 00:03:32
So, Bob, what other kinds of things have you tested at ALDEF in the past? 00:03:37
Well, over the years, we've tested a lot of different things, 00:03:41
but probably the biggest accomplishment here at the ALDEF has been the pioneering work done on hydroplaning. 00:03:44
An aircraft or highway vehicle tire hydroplanes when water comes between a tire and pavement. 00:03:49
When this happens, the tire loses contact with the pavement and is supported only by the water. 00:03:55
This causes the tire to lose traction, which could then send the vehicle spinning out of control. 00:04:01
Researchers at ALDEF have proven that by cutting thin grooves across concrete surfaces, 00:04:06
channels or escape routes are created, which allow excess water to drain from the surface. 00:04:12
This process of cutting grooves dramatically reduces the risk of hydroplaning. 00:04:18
As a result, hundreds of commercial airport runways and interstate highway curves and overpasses have had these safety grooves added. 00:04:23
Accidents on slippery highways are down as much as 85 percent in some areas, 00:04:31
and aircraft tire friction in wet conditions has been improved by 200 to 300 percent. 00:04:37
An added benefit of grooving is that the lifespan of these groove surfaces is extended by 5 to 10 years, 00:04:43
resulting in significant maintenance cost savings. 00:04:49
One of the things we're doing now is trying to increase the safety margin of space shuttle orbiter tires. 00:04:53
NASA wants to improve that safety by increasing the load carrying capability of the orbiter tire by about 20 percent 00:04:59
and increasing the speed capability by about 10 percent up to 250 knots. 00:05:06
This is going to require a new tire design, and the best place to evaluate that is right here at the ALDEF. 00:05:12
Rather than onboard an orbiter that costs several billion dollars, 00:05:17
we're going to be looking at design considerations like the structure of the tire itself and the tread patterns 00:05:20
to determine which design path to go down. 00:05:27
So as long as tires have been around, Bob, it seems like we'd know by now how they behave. 00:05:30
You'd think so, but as it turns out, how a tire behaves, whether it's an automobile tire, aircraft tire, or a spacecraft tire, 00:05:36
is dependent on so many factors that technology is not yet at the point where we can accurately predict the behavior of each and every tire. 00:05:45
So that's where the ALDEF comes in again to test these things and improve the predictions. 00:05:53
We share that data with tire manufacturers so that ultimately they can provide a product that all of us can use more safely. 00:05:58
The Aircraft Landing Dynamics Facility has been in continuous use since the 1960s. 00:06:06
The structures there have not only made runways and roads safer for all of us, but also coined the term hydroplaning. 00:06:11
Wind tunnels have been around for over 100 years. 00:06:17
Even the Wright brothers used their own homemade wind tunnel to test ideas for their first flyer. 00:06:20
Today, aircraft designs undergo significant wind tunnel testing before being built to full size and test flown. 00:06:24
But what is a wind tunnel and how does it operate? 00:06:30
For some answers, we turn to Johnny Alonzo to find out how it works. 00:06:33
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Idioma/s:
en
Niveles educativos:
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Autor/es:
NASA LaRC Office of Education
Subido por:
EducaMadrid
Licencia:
Reconocimiento - No comercial - Sin obra derivada
Visualizaciones:
480
Fecha:
28 de mayo de 2007 - 17:04
Visibilidad:
Público
Enlace Relacionado:
NASAs center for distance learning
Duración:
06′ 37″
Relación de aspecto:
4:3 Hasta 2009 fue el estándar utilizado en la televisión PAL; muchas pantallas de ordenador y televisores usan este estándar, erróneamente llamado cuadrado, cuando en la realidad es rectangular o wide.
Resolución:
480x360 píxeles
Tamaño:
38.54 MBytes

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