LYNNWOOD – A new Crane Aerospace &Electronics product monitors the condition of airplane tires and wheels, beams that data to the cockpit, uses a system that doesn’t require batteries, and is small enough to fit inside the valve stem used to inflate the tires.
And if that weren’t gee-whiz enough, it’s adapted from technology that first was used to monitor the health of cattle in feedlots.
Holy cow.
Crane calls it the SmartStem. In March, it won a contract to supply them to the Boeing Co. for use on the 777. Boeing also plans to use them on the 787.
Maintaining correct air pressure in your car’s tires can help your gas mileage, but it’s far more important for airliners.
“Not having the proper air pressure in aircraft tires is a very bad thing,” said Jeff Green, who manages the SmartStem program for Crane. “It’s flat-out unsafe.”
Michael O’Leary / The Herald
Underinflated tires wear out faster, he continued. “It can come apart, be injested in an engine and lead to all sorts of ugly things.”
To forestall that, airlines keep an eye on tire pressure. It’s not a pleasant task. The friction caused by landing heats the tires and wheels to scorching temperatures – typically around 200 degrees.
“All that energy required to stop a plane gets converted to heat,” Green said. “It’s a brutal environment, very severe.”
Yet, tire manufacturers insist on having detailed records showing that tires have been kept properly inflated as part of their warranties.
To accomplish that, engineers have been looking for ways to keep mechanics from having to check tire pressure manually.
Crane’s system uses radio-frequency identification technology that originally was used on livestock. The grandfather of SmartStem is embedded in the ears of cattle in feedlots, helping managers track each cow’s temperature as a way of keeping tabs on its health.
“We’ve piggybacked our application onto this chip,” Green said.
Crane licensed the technology and funded research that allowed it to be adapted for use on airplanes.
The system now uses ultra-miniaturized monitors – about the size of the date stamped on a dime – to measure the temperature of the tire and the wheel. It’s powered by a magnetic field, so “it doesn’t require any batteries or anything,” Green said.
A wireless device transmits the temperature data into the airliners’ onboard computers. Crane builds another version, which features hand-held temperature readers, for smaller planes.
Green says SmartStem’s just the start of a whole new line of sensors that will allow airlines to track the condition of parts of airplanes, or things within them – inflatable life vests, for example.
“There’s all sorts of things you can do with this technology,” he said. “We see this as the first of many applications.”
And all this is built into a fully functional valve stem. “It has to hold air,” Green said. “That’s its main function.”
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
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