Carbon Revolution virtually validates carbon fiber Chinook wheel

The wheels were developed as part of the Australian government’s Defence Innovation Hub program, which saw Carbon Revolution design a prototype wheel capable of standing up to ‘all the rigors a military application demands, in durability and accommodation of legacy hardware’.

Carbon Revolution Chief Technology Officer, Dr Ashley Denmead, said that the wheel’s virtual validation process included finite element analysis (FEA), subscale testing and internal ply architecture design. The results were delivered in a report to the Defence Innovation Hub.

The next phase of the program will see Carbon Revolution produce and test physical prototype wheels, before exploring the possibility of expanding to other aerospace applications.

“We have demonstrated that this wheel would provide significant benefits to end users while standing up to the rigors of use in the military,” Denmead said. “We have also been considerate of other important aspects during the design process, such as in-service inspections and the manufacturability of the wheels.”

The wheels offer weight reductions of 27kg over six wheels

Carbon CEO Jack Dingle commented: “Our concept wheel shows a 35-per-cent reduction in weight (27kg over six wheels) is achievable with potential to achieve a greater reduction, thanks to our lightweight carbon fiber technology, and our team’s work to optimize the wheel’s geometry to improve its efficiency.”

“These wheels could be supplied on new build CH-47 Chinook helicopters and retrofitted to thousands of current CH-47s operating worldwide. But a real opportunity for us lies in other civilian and military vertical lift aircraft applications. In particular, the weight savings for commercial operators would result in substantial savings in fuel costs,” he added.

Dingle also said that Carbon Revolution’s participation in the government program represented a great opportunity for the company – which primarily serves the automotive industry – to extend its operations into the aerospace sector.

The wheels are also designed to meet the CH-47’s maximum static vertical load requirement of over 9,000kg per wheel – far higher than the 500kg per wheel requirement Carbon Revolution typically works to meet when designing wheels for a high-performance car.

UK composite specialist Carbon ThreeSixty and the Innovate UK government innovation agency also announced plans to develop an all-composite carbon fiber-reinforced helicopter wheel in February 2021.