PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Carbon Brake Cooling Rates
View Single Post
Old 25th Jan 2014, 20:43
  #4 (permalink)  
awblain
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Pasadena
Posts: 633
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
I'm on the lookout for exam questions, so thought I'd have a ramble.

On the effect of braking during taxying... stopping dead from 30knots only dumps 6% as much energy as stopping from 120knots, so the history after landing isn't likely to be crucial, unless there's been repeated hard braking.

Wind can only help cooling, by blowing more cool air over the ~500C brakes.

Even carbon brakes don't get hot enough to cool radiatively: at 500C, a half square meter of brake radiates ~1kW, but it's taken in ~50MJ on stopping, giving a radiative cooling time of ~10 hours. Convective cooling from 500C over a half square meter is going to lose much more: probably ~20kW, making an initial (then slowing) cooling rate right to lose the energy in ~40 minutes. An hour or so to cool would seem to be a decent rule of thumb.

Within reason, ambient temperature isn't too important either, as heat loss is quickest when the brakes are hottest. While there's more of a gap between -20C and 500C than there is between 30C and 500C, it's not by a huge amount. If the concrete is at 60C under a burning desert sun, then it's a bit more of an issue: the ambient air temperature might not be the right thing to put into the tables.

Whether the brakes are carbon or steel shouldn't make much difference to the cooling time, since they both absorb the same amount of energy; however, I'd expect that it could well affect the temperature to which they must cool before they are safe to be used full-on again.

In the heat and thin air at Calama in Chile, I know LAN turn around A318/19/20s in only 30 minutes. I pretty sure they need fans for this.
awblain is offline