Icephobic coating evaluation for aerospace applications

This paper presents an extended study on the properties of icephobic coatings for aerospace applications, more specifically rotorcraft. Ideally, an icephobic material should be the least expensive anti-icing solution, inasmuch as the anti-icing effect is not destroyed by inclement environmental conditions. Several studies on the subject have already been published. Nevertheless, in most cases, only the results of ice adhesion on freshly coated samples are presented and discussed. In this study, the effects of aging (weathering and erosion) and of the number of ice/deicing cycles on coating durability were also considered relative to their possible use on airplanes and helicopters. In the first step, ice adhesion was measured in Centrifuge Adhesion Tests (CAT) on eight promising coatings. The ice adhesion τadh of the candidate coatings was found to vary from 0.001 MPa to 0.16 MPa. In the second step, in order to analyze ice accretion and ice shedding, four favorable coatings were evaluated in a wind tunnel on scaled-down rotor (SRB) set-ups, which were iced and rotated until shedding occurred. Regarding the environmental aspect, the durability of the utmost ice adhesion reducer coatings was evaluated under rain and sand erosion, as well as multiple icing/deicing exposures