A new theoretical model of aircraft arresting system based on polymeric foam material

The engineering material arresting system (EMAS) has been widely employed in airports around the world for purpose of stopping the overrun airplanes from damage. However, the foamed concrete, which is used as the EMAS core at present, has drawn increasing criticism from the public opinion for environmental issue and aging problem. In this paper, a new arresting system made of polyurethane foam with high energy absorption capacity was proposed to overcome the above problems. An analytical model based on the Avalle empirical model, which takes into account the coupling effect between the aircraft wheel and the foam material, was presented to estimate the horizontal resistances exerted on the aircraft wheel, including the crushing drag, the tearing drag, the adhesive drag and the friction drag. In addition, the stopping distance required to arrest the overrun aircraft was predicted. Furthermore, the accuracy of the theoretical results was validated through comparison with the results of FAA full-scale arresting tests. Besides, the influences of the arrestor height, material strength, aircraft weight and the radius of aircraft wheel on the arresting performance of polyurethane foam material were performed, indicating that a reasonable parametric selection is extremely crucial to obtain the optimal design for the aircraft arresting system.