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

Icing is among aviation’s most serious weather hazards because it renders aircraft unflyable before flight and severely reduces aircraft performance during flight. Existing approaches for mitigating ice accretion on leading edges, such as the inflatable boot and liquid deicer can significantly increase weight, power requirements and manufacturing complexity without providing sufficient reliability. These systems also experience severe erosion damage and often require early repair or replacement. Infoscitex Corporation (IST) proposes to leverage its past experience with developing a successful sand and rain erosion resistant helicopter boot and integrate icephobic compounds to surmount both the erosion and icing challenges facing fixed wing aircraft. This will be accomplished by: • Using IST’s proprietary thermoplastic nanocomposite formulation which has demonstrated resistance to sand and rain erosion • Demonstrating novel methods of incorporating a freezing point depressant (FPD) into the leading edge boot to enable continual ice accretion prevention • Incorporating nano- and micron-sized minerals to control the release rate of the FPDs