ICE PROTECTION TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATION FOR UAVS

OVER THE PAST FIVE YEARS, A RESEARCH CONSORTIUM SPONSORED BY THE NASA LEWIS RESEARCH CENTER HAS BEEN THE SOURCE OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF SEVERAL NEW ICE PROTECTION TECHNOLOGIES DIRECTLY APPLICABLE TO UNMANNED AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES (UAV'S). INNOVATIVE DYNAMICS (ID) HAS BEEN INVOLVED IN SEVERAL OF THESE PROGRAMS AND AS A RESULT HAS DEVELOPED AN ICE SENSOR BASED ON "SMART STRUCTURES" TECHNOLOGY. BY MONITORING THE VIBRATION SIGNATURE OF A STRUCTURE, THE SYSTEM DETERMINES ICE THICKNESS AND DISTRIBUTIONS USING A NETWORK OF EMBEDDED SENSOR ARRAYS AND DISTRIBUTED PROCESSORS. PATTERN RECOGNITION TECHNIQUES ARE UTILIZED TO CLASSIFY THE SENSOR SIGNALS AND DETERMINE ICE BUILDUP AND ASSOCIATED AERODYNAMIC PENALTY. THE MEMORY OF THE SYSTEM IS FORMED THROUGH A LEARNING PROCESS IN WHICH A SYSTEMATIC SERIES OF EXPERIMENTS IS PRESENTED TO THE SYSTEM IN THE ICING WIND TUNNEL ENVIRONMENT. THE ICE DETECTION SYSTEM DESCRIBED HERE COULD BE USED IN CONJUNCTION WITH A VARIETY OF DEICING SYSTEM COMPONENTS TO PROVIDE AUTONOMOUS ICE PROTECTION CAPABILITY. DEICING TECHNOLOGIES TO BE EVALUATED INCLUDE ELECTRO-EXPULSIVE (EEDS), PNEUMATIC IMPULSE (PIIP) AND SHAPE MEMORY ALLOY (SMA) DEICERS. DURING THE PHASE I PROGRAM, ID WILL INTEGRATE THESE DEICING ACTUATORS WITH OUR ICE DETECTION SYSTEM FOR PERFORMANCE EVALUATION IN AN ICING CHAMBER. THE BEST OVERALL PERFORMER WILL BE DEVELOPED INTO AN INTEGRAL UAV STRUCTURE FOR ICING QUALIFICATION TESTING DURING THE PHASE II PROGRAM. THE PROPOSED AUTONOMOUS ICE PROTECTION SYSTEM WILL OFFER AN ALTERNATIVE TO CURRENT DEICING SYSTEMS USED ON COMMERCIAL AND MILITARY AIRCRAFT. FOR EXAMPLE, THIS SYSTEM CAN BE APPLIED TO ADVANCED COMMERCIAL TRANSPORTS WITH HIGH BYPASS AND TURBOPROP ENGINES WHERE ENGINE BLEED AIR IS NOT AVAILABLE.