Why are airplane tires filled with nitrogen instead of air?
Created: 12/16/2022, 3:00 p.m
By: Franziska Kaindl
Aircraft tires are exposed to enormous forces and must therefore be very robust.
It is important that they are filled with nitrogen instead of air.
Compared to the aircraft itself, the aircraft tires look almost tiny – and yet they are a lot larger than car tires: Depending on the type of jet, one piece can be up to 1.5 meters in diameter.
Both variants are made of rubber, but one of them has to withstand much more powerful forces: when an aircraft takes off, it accelerates from zero to over 300 kilometers per hour within a few seconds on the runway.
On top of that, the tires have to lift a weight of several hundred tons into the air.
In order to be able to withstand the conditions during take-off and landing, aircraft tires must therefore be very robust.
This includes, among other things, that they are filled with nitrogen, unlike car tyres.
Aircraft tires have to withstand enormous forces.
© Imago
Aircraft Tires: Nitrogen is non-flammable
Nitrogen has two distinct advantages in aviation. One of them is that, unlike air, it is non-flammable.
This is particularly important because aircraft tires are subjected to enormous loads during take-off and landing - a defect or significantly low air pressure could cause a fire under extreme acceleration, according to ADAC.
This is prevented by using nitrogen.
On top of that, due to the lack of oxygen, there is no corrosion inside the tires, which means that the tires have a longer service life, according to Lufthansa Air Technology.
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Nitrogen in aircraft tires protects against freezing temperatures
The normal air that we use to inflate our car tires always contains a certain amount of water, according to the
flyer
of the Stuttgart Airport magazine .
In icy temperatures at altitudes of several thousand meters, the water in the tire and thus the tire itself would freeze.
Nitrogen, on the other hand, only changes from the gaseous to the liquid state at -170 degrees Celsius, explains the company Inmatec, which manufactures nitrogen generators.
And even at an altitude of eleven kilometers, according to the
leaflet
, it's not that cold.
