Experimental study of two electro-mechanical de-icing systems applied on a wing section tested in an icing wind tunnel

Abstract Two electro-mechanical de-icing systems are presented, which are applied to a test specimen consisting of a wing section with an NACA0012 profile. The test specimen is of a modular design to be able to substitute the leading edge section for investigating the different de-icing systems. The de-icing tests are performed in the icing wind tunnel of the Institute of Fluid Mechanics of the TU Braunschweig. The first de-icing concept is an electromechanical system based on structural vibrations of the unstiffened sections. Due to piezoceramic actuators and their positions, the skin is excited at its natural frequency. The actuators are placed at the inner side of the leading edge. The second system under investigation is the Electro- Impulse De-Icing concept. Coils placed underneath the upper and lower aluminum skin are supplied with short, high-current impulses which produce opposing time-dependent magnetic fields around coil and skin. The resulting magnetic forces repel the structure which leads to a damped oscillation of the skin. The first aim of this work is to investigate the performance of the two electromechanical de-icing systems under various icing conditions. Operational parameters like temperature and liquid water content are varied. The test results show that the deicing performance of both systems mainly depends on the ice layer thickness and the environmental temperature. The second aim of this work is to investigate the de-icing mechanism of the accumulated ice. Therefore, the de-icing procedure is recorded with a high-speed camera