Systems for Trailer Tire Safety & Airliner Engine Design Win R&D Awards
13 August 2000
SAN ANTONIO - Southwest Research Institute has won two R&D 100 Awards honoring the top technical achievements of 1999.
The awards, sponsored by R&D Magazine, went to the Meritor Tire Inflation System by PSI, which automatically inflates, monitors and equalizes tire air pressures on long-haul trailer rigs; and to the DARWIN(tm) (Design Assessment of Reliability With INspection) software code used by gas turbine engine manufacturers to improve the safety of jet engines used in commercial airliners.
R&D 100 awards, sponsored by R&D Magazine, are presented annually in recognition of the 100 most significant technical accomplishments of the past year.
Co-recipient for the Meritor system is Pressure Systems International (PSI) of San Antonio, which developed, manufactures and distributes the Automatic Tire Inflation System.
The Meritor system uses protected compressed air from the air-brake reservoir in the trailer of a long-haul truck to inflate any trailer tire that falls below the system's pre-set, proper cold-temperature air pressure setting. The tire inflation system delivers air to a leaking tire even as the truck is pulling a trailer down the highway, helping to eliminate blowouts due to low tire pressures during operation.
An indicator light, visible in the rear-view mirror, alerts the driver to an excessive air pressure loss, providing advance warning of maintenance or service requirements. A one-way check valve prevents a puncture in one tire from causing air pressure losses in other tires.
The DARWIN(tm) software design code was developed for the Federal Aviation Administration as a tool to help engine manufacturers assess the risk that a jet engine's titanium turbine disk might contain a metallurgical flaw that could cause fatigue cracking, leading to possible catastrophic failure. One such failure in 1989 led to the crash of a DC-10 airliner at Sioux City, Iowa, after fragments from a disintegrating engine disk disabled the aircraft's hydraulic flight control systems.
DARWIN(tm) integrates finite element stress analysis results, fracture mechanics-based life assessment for low-cycle fatigue, material anomaly data, probability of anomaly detection and inspection schedules to determine the probability of fracture of a rotor disk as a function of aircraft flights. Its use is expected to reduce the risk of catastrophic turbine rotor failure by as much as an order of magnitude for new designs.
DARWIN was developed with support from Rolls-Royce, Honeywell, GE Aircraft Engines and Pratt & Whitney, and the Rotor Integrity Subcommittee (RISC) of the Aerospace Industries Association.
SwRI has won 23 R&D 100 awards in all since 1971. The awards are to be presented in Chicago on Sept. 27, 2000.
