Air‐Cooled Brake: The Reduction of Aircraft ‘Turn‐Round’ Times by Use of the Dunlop Fan

A FACTOR that is becoming of increasing importance in the economic operation of airline services, and has long been recognized as a necessity in the military field, is the reduction of aircraft ‘turn‐round’ times to the minimum. Many examples may be quoted to illustrate the degree to which engineering ingenuity has been applied to this problem, for example in the use of airstairs to facilitate the rapid transfer of passengers and freight, pressure refuellers that can dispense fuel at the rate of 1000 galls./min., and the design of the aircraft to facilitate rapid servicing of the various systems. At the same time the advent of the high speed aircraft has introduced the penalty of high wing loadings and consequent high landing speeds, which in turn have resulted in the extension of runways and a continual search for ways of reducing the ground run of aircraft. The most common methods of braking aircraft during this ground run are by use of wheel brakes, reverse thrust and parachutes, or a combination. The evolution of the non‐skid brake has improved the performance of conventional wheel brakes but with the steady increase in aircraft weights and landing speeds the difficulty of dissipating the heat evolved presents the brake designer with another difficult problem.