Energy saving strategy for the development of icephobic coatings and surfaces

Abstract

Aircraft are frequently exposed to cold environments and ice accumulation on aircraft surface may lead to catastrophic accidents. An effective solution of ice protection is a critical requirement in the aerospace industry.For the research and development of icephobic coatings, the current coating design target mainly focuses on lowering the ice adhesion strength between the ice and the surface. However, as a passive ice protection approach, the use of icephobic coating often has to be combined with an active ice protection solution (e.g. electro-thermal heating, hot air bleeding, and vibration, etc.), especially for the in-flight application where the reliability of ice protection must be ensured. Therefore, ice adhesion strength is no longer the sole criterion to evaluate the icephobic performance of a coating or a surface. It is a need to establish a more practical strategy for the design of icephobic coatings and surface. In this work, an energy saving strategy is proposed to assess the de-icing performance of the icephobic coating and surface when active heating is involved. The energy consumed for the de-icing operation assisted by the ice gravity is used as the key criterion for the overall performance of icephobic coating and surface. Successful validation has been achieved for evaluating the deicing performance of selected coatings and surfaces, which demonstrates an alternative strategy for the design and practical application of icephobic coatings and surfaces in ice protection.

Nanoscale “Earthquake” Effect Induced by Thin Film Surface Acoustic Waves as a New Strategy for Ice Protection

“…A conventional electro‐thermal de‐icing method was also performed with a 1D multi‐lamina heat conduction configuration for the same devices without any SAW applied. [ 39 ] The applied power for electro‐thermal devices was 2.86 W (input voltage 22 V) during testing. Their energy requirements were calculated for comparison purposes.…”

Electro‐/Photo‐Thermal Promoted Anti‐Icing Materials: A New Strategy Combined with Passive Anti‐Icing and Active De‐Icing

“…The traditional thermal heating method is widely used and very efficient for active de-icing, [11,[68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75] while it requires excess energy consumption and has a potential risk of surface overheating in harsh and unpredictable environments. [76,77] Thus, the traditional thermal heating method is not an ideal approach for the practical anti-icing application. For specific anti-icing fields (i.e., aircrafts), however, the reliability, efficiency and safety are of the first importance factors for anti-icing/de-icing in the cold weather.…”

Metallic skeleton promoted two-phase durable icephobic layers

“…Electro-thermal de-icing test was performed to evaluate the de-icing performance of the different samples. An experimental apparatus was set up according to our previous work [23].…”

“…In this testing model, heat transfer is perceived as a onedimensional flux from the heating side to the ice/sample interface. The energy used to melt the interface ice is directly linked to ice adhesion strength and thermal conduction efficiency [23].…”