In 2017 No Bolt designed and manufactured an all aluminium tyre inflation safety cage for the safe inflating of rotary wing and fixed wing tyres (up to a 600mm diameter).
The safety cage has been designed to contain tyre/rim components following a catastrophic failure during inflation. Intended to reduce the risk of injury to personnel and equipment from flying shrapnel, the safety cage is engineered to absorb the energy of a tyre explosion.
Key issues/risks
The biggest risk related to a safety cage failure caused by an explosive event.
Before we locked in our design, we worked with an external engineering firm to undertake FEA (Finite Element Analysis) to simulate the blast and resulting effect on the safety cage. This not only allowed us to reduce the number of prototypes which would typically be required to validate the design, it was also far safer to model the failure in the safety of a computer simulation.
What was the result?
The platform was designed to withstand a tyre/rim failure at 540psi (150% of tyre pressure of 360psi) and FEA confirmed the solution meets these requirements.
