Icephobic Coatings or Surface Treatments for Turbomachinery Ice Protection Applications

Icing conditions create significant safety concerns within the aircraft turbomachinery, and in surrounding nacelles, stators, and thrust vectoring surfaces. Icephobic surfaces could significantly reduce the accretion of ice within these components, allowing for safer operation. In our Phase I effort, HygraTek developed extremely durable elastomeric coatings, that display some of the lowest ice adhesion strength values ever reported, and can be spray applied onto any substrate. A comprehensive set of wind tunnel experiments showed the potential of the developed coatings in significantly reducing ice accretion at all conditions tested. As part of our Phase II effort, we plan to extend our research endeavor to fully evaluate the suitability of the developed coating for the different turbomachinery applications. In our proposed work, we aim to: (a) Fully evaluate the icephobic coating performance under a wide range of ambient temperatures, liquid water contents, and flow speed conditions (b) Optimize the coating composition to minimize ice accretion and to ensure maximum adhesion to the underlying substrate (c) Conduct additional durability testing (d) Evaluate the compatibility of our developed icephobic coatings with legacy de-icing systems, and (d) Establish the strategy for scale up and rapid commercialization.