China to construct first domestic aircraft tire facility to break foreign monopoly

Source: Global Times Published: 2020/8/4 15:20:46

An aircraft conducts a test flight for the second phase of the expansion project of the Haikou Meilan International Airport in Haikou, south China's Hainan Province, July 30, 2020. The second phase of the airport expansion project started test flight on Thursday. (Xinhua/Pu Xiaoxu)


South China's Guangzhou will be home to China's first large-scale scientific facility for aircraft tire kinetics experiments, marking an important step away from a high dependence on imports and toward domestic production, which is expected in the next decade.

The Guangzhou Public Resources Trading Center issued a bidding announcement for the scheme and preliminary design stages of the aviation tire science center project, according to a recent report published on bidcenter.com.cn.

The invitation for bids suggests the project - to be built in Huangpu District - will be the first scientific facility for aircraft tire dynamics testing.

At present, all tires used by China's civil aviation aircraft are rented from foreign companies such as Michelin, Goodyear and Bridgestone, which charge for each use of the landing gear, and the tires must be replaced every three months, Guangdong-based news website Southcn.com reported on Tuesday.

Flight safety requirements determine that the reliability of aviation tires cannot be verified by aircraft installation and can only be solved by ground simulation tests. Aviation tires have a complex material system, design concept, manufacturing process and evaluation method, meaning they are very different from ordinary car tires, experts said.

After the center is established, relevant research including the design and development of new elastic materials and subversive intelligent elastic materials, as well as aviation tire dynamics testing with aviation tires and high-end tires will be conducted, the report said.

With high-performance military aviation tires as its breakthrough point, the Huangpu Advanced Materials Research Institute of the Changchun Institute of Chemistry, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will transform key materials and core technologies developed in the research and development process into civil aviation tires and other high-end tires.

The project's technical level will reach Michelin's current level within 10 years. A world-class aviation tire research and development and innovation base will also be established in Guangzhou, according to the report.



Posted in: ECONOMY,BIZ FOCUS

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