Event Description
During the takeoff roll, both center landing gear tires (#9 and #10) shredded, damaging the door retraction arms and multiple fuselage skin panels. The flight crew could not retract the landing gear and elected to return to the departure airport, where they performed an uneventful overweight landing.
Examination and Findings
Examination of the tire debris revealed significant inter-ply tearing, indicating the tires did not fail due to a cap failure. According to the operator and tire manufacturer, the failure signatures were consistent with a rapid and violent event, which can be attributed either to foreign object damage (FOD) or a low tire pressure situation.
The #10 tire exhibited high heat signatures, suggesting that the #9 tire failed first, followed by overheating and subsequent failure of the #10 tire. No FOD was recovered with the tire debris, and the nose tires sustained no damage, despite being in-line with the center landing gear. This lends more credence to a low tire pressure situation.
The aircraft had undergone a regularly scheduled service check approximately 30 hours prior to the event, which included a tire condition and pressure check, but the tire pressure was not documented. A post-incident examination revealed that the #9 wheel had a leaking fuse plug. The fuse plug was tested and found to have a 6-psi leak over a 12-hour period. The pre-incident tire pressure was unknown.