A passenger airliner’s brakes are mounted inside the wheels and consist of a “package” of fixed and revolving brake disks. When the brake is activated, pistons compress this “package,” the disk surfaces touch each other, and the resulting friction causes the aircraft to decelerate.
Most braking systems feature disks made from composite carbon-carbon materials that heat up considerably when subjected to compression fatigue. These materials must become more resilient.
A team of researchers from NUST MISIS’ Center of Composite Materials headed by a senior research fellow Andrei Stepashkin signed a contract with Russian-based Rubin Aviation Corporation to study the fracture toughness of various composite materials that are regularly subjected to changing loads.
According to Stepashkin, NUST MISIS tests show that materials reinforced with discrete carbon fiber resist the propagation of cracks perpendicular to the fiber more effectively. And materials reinforced with carbon matrix are better suited to withstand the spreading of cracks along the carbon fiber.
By combining both reinforcing types (for example, during the laying of multi-layer materials), it becomes possible to increase the fracture toughness of materials in both directions for better endurance and reliably.
Read the full article at Sputnik.com.
Click here to see the journal article explaining the findings.
