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The Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability announced on Nov. 3 that it is developing a system to remove ice from wings through vibrations.
Ice forming on wings reduces lift, increases drag, impairs the mobility of flight control surfaces and even causes an aircraft to stall in the air and crash. It can form at any time of the year due to passing through clouds or layers of cold, moist air after takeoff or on approach. Most aircraft are equipped with thermal systems that channel hot air from the engine across the wings to combat this problem, but the process takes a lot of energy and impacts engine efficiency.
The idea of Fraunhofer's process is to conserve energy by designing a wing that vibrates the part with ice, causing it to crack and flake off. Sensors will detect formations on specific sections of the wing and then the frequency needed to vibrate the ice is determined. Special actuators trigger low-frequency material vibrations targeted at the spots where the ice has formed to break it up. Denis Becker, a researcher at Fraunhofer, explained that the vibrations are invisible to the naked eye but should be effective in removing ice.?(Simulation of a wing vibration)
The frequency of vibration varies each time due to constantly changing exterior conditions. The research at Fraunhofer went through various steps to test the process, including placing a wing inside an icing wind tunnel.?(Wing in ice tunnel)
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"The determining factors include the material the wings are made from, the speed, the altitude of flight, the temperature, humidity and how thick the layer of ice is," said Becker. "Algorithms use that information to calculate the natural resonant frequency."
The project is part of the European Union's Clean Aviation research and innovation program and includes partners such as Airbus and Parker-Meggitt.