Innovative Concepts for Non-Thermal Based Anti-Icing/De-Icing of Rotor Blade Leading Edges

The titanium sheath that currently protects most leading edges of rotary wing aircraft is plagued with several issues associated with the thermal deicing system. Of greatest concern is the overheating damage. An elastomeric boot offers lower weight, flexibility, abrasion-resistance and field repairability. To date, these have failed due to sand and rain droplet impact damage and have also not been capable of thermal deicing. Infoscitex has already demonstrated its nanocomposite elastomer boot material’s ability to withstand the full battery of sand and rain erosion tests and is now proposing to develop a boot capable of non-thermal anti-icing/de-icing without requiring electric power. This is accomplished by incorporating both a non-toxic freezing point depressant additive (<-65 °F) in a proprietary manner in conjunction with the nanomaterial reinforcement. This enables the freezing point depressant to gradually exude and migrate to the surface of the boot to form a thin, anti-icing/de-icing boundary layer. In Phase I the Infoscitex/University of Texas team will demonstrate the non-thermal anti-icing/de-icing performance as well as the sand and rain erosion-resistance for this novel technology. In Phase II, the team will scale up the material formulation and extrusion techniques to enable full scale testing.