An Ice Protection System Based on Phased Piezoelectric Transducers

This study focuses on a system constituted of two piezoelectric transducers installed on a slat representative element, with ice protection purposes. The waves generated by these actuators can cause, in fact, shear actions between the slat panel and the ice accretion, with the final effect of breaking and detaching it. A property of the system is, however, the possibility of regulating the phase between the excitation signals of the two transducers. This capability can be exploited to produce local advantageous wave interference with a consequent amplification of the shear actions. Benefits can be obtained in terms of: (1) reduction of needed power; (2) recovery of signal intensity losses due to distance, geometric, and mechanic discontinuities; (3) recovery of non-optimal functionality due to off-design conditions. The work starts with an overview of the impact of the ice on the aeronautic and other sectors. Then, attention is paid to the systems currently used to protect aircraft, with a specific focus on ultrasounds generated by piezoelectric transducers. The concept proposed in this work is then presented, illustrating the main components and the working modality. On this basis and considering the specific nature of the physical phenomenon, the modeling approach was defined and implemented. At first, the impact of some critical parameters, such as the temperature and the thickness of the ice, was investigated. Then, the impact of the phase delay parameter was considered, estimating the increase of magnitude potentially reachable by means of optimal tuning. Finally, a preliminary experimental campaign was organized and a comparison with the numerical predictions was performed.