When an airplane first touches the runway, there is an interesting moment of drama because the ground (relative to the airplane’s wheel) is moving past quite rapidly, while the wheel just at the instant of touchdown, is not moving at all. Of course, there is a great deal of friction between the non-rotating wheel and the moving ground, so the wheel is accelerated rapidly in rotation until it “catches up” to the ground speed and rolls without sliding. However, the wheel has some rotational inertia and so requires a little bit of time to get up to speed. During that time, the tire is sliding across the ground and generating a lot of heat. Today we’ll talk about a rough approximation for the heat generated and transferred to the tire during an airplane landing.
