Lighter, Longer-Lasting, Sustainable—Three Stars

Michelin, has introduced a new family of aircraft tires. Dubbed the Michelin Air X Sky Light and designed for use on both narrow- and wide-body commercial airliners, the tires feature a new radial technology by which they’re rendered ten-to-twenty-percent lighter and 15-to-twenty-percent longer-wearing than Michelin’s previous generation of equivalent tires.

On narrow-body aircraft such as Boeing’s ubiquitous 737 or Airbus’s popular A320, the main landing-gear weight savings occasioned by Michelin’s new Air X Sky Light tires could be as much as 165-pounds. On wide-body aircraft the likes of Boeing’s mighty 777 or Airbus’s A350, Michelin’s new tires are likely to facilitate main landing-gear weight savings in excess of 550-pounds. Such diminishments in weight represent substantial aggregate reductions in fuel-consumption and CO2 emissions alike.

Over a span of 12-months, a fleet of forty long-haul airliners retrofitted with Michelin’s Air X Sky Light tires could save its operator as much as $900,000 in jet-fuel costs and reduce CO2 emissions by some 3,400 metric-tons. Likewise reshod, a fleet of one-hundred medium-haul airliners could—over the same time-period—reduce its operator’s jet-fuel expenditures by as much as $600,000 while cutting CO2 emissions by 2,200-metric-tons.

Michelin’s design of the Air X Sky Light began with a careful assessment of aero-tire life-cycles considered from the perspective of sustainability. Studies suggested the longevity of aero-tires is predicated primarily upon the weight thereof. Larger masses are more difficultly compelled to movement. Because heavy tires spin-up more slowly, they abrade more severely upon touch-down than their lighter counterparts—thereby losing greater amounts of material and sustaining more extensive treadwear with every landing.

The diminished mass of Michelin’s Air X Sky Light tires is ascribable to breakthroughs in material technology—specifically, ultra-resistant casing compounds and latest-generation hybrid cables and fabrics—as well as advanced sidewall and tread architecture, and improved manufacturing processes. Air X Sky Light tires feature crown and footprint designs optimized for extended lifespan.

In keeping with Michelin’s aim to sustain a high-degree of environmental stewardship, the manufacture of the company’s new Air X Sky Light tires makes extensive use of sustainable materials. What’s more, Michelin’s new Air X Sky Light tires are one-hundred-percent compatible with the PresSense connected tire offer developed in partnership with Safran.

Founded in 1889 and based in the city of Clermont-Ferrand in France’s Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes région, Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin SCA is a French multinational tire manufacturing company known colloquially throughout the world as merely Michelin.

Second only to Bridgestone in the scope of its tire-making operations, Michelin is credited with the invention of the radial-tire. In addition to aircraft, Michelin designs and builds tires for automobiles, motorcycles, heavy-equipment, and bicycles. Prior to the 2011 retirements thereof, NASA’s Space Shuttles were equipped with Michelin tires.

FMI: https://aircraft.michelin.com