Numerical Modeling of Electro-Thermal Anti-Icing System for Unmanned Aircraft System

Aeronautical and Space-Rocket Engineering


Аuthors

Kalyulin S. L.*, Babushkina A. V.**, Seregina M. A.***

Perm National Research Polytechnic University, PNRPU, 29, Komsomolsky Prospekt, Perm, 614990, Russia

*e-mail: ksl@pstu.ru
**e-mail: annvikoz@mail.ru
***e-mail: sereginarita@gmail.com

Abstract

As of today, the unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) application is actively developing. These arrangements are called for performing filming, cargo transportation, conducting inspection of objects under various weather conditions. At the moment, only some of the UASs in the Russian Federation are equipped with the anti-icing systems (AIS). which quite often are of large weight and low energy efficiency, since they were being developed similar to the ones for the aircraft engines (PS-90,PPD-14, etc.), where the aircraft weight is being measured by the tens of tons.
The new UAS anti-icing systems should be energy efficient and cost-effective. The AIS computing techniques are not enough studied for the moment, as long as they are associated with the necessity for conducting complex inter-disciplinary computations, or blowing-off in the aero-refrigeration tunnels.
The technique presented in the article may be applied for the 3D computations of various elements icing (propellers, wing, case-shaped parts, total-pressure tubes) for various UAS types (multi-rotor-, helicopter-, aircraft-type, gyrocopter, VTOL, hypbrid, etc.), as well as for computations in the wind tunnels.
The authors test a hypothesis on applicability of the icing with anti-icing electro-thermal system computational technique in the conjugated thermal exchange formulation for the multi-layer wing structure of the unmanned aircraft system to determine necessary heat power for the ice melting under limited energy source.
The article describes the technique for computing the UAS wing airfoil with anti-icing system icing in the conjugated thermal exchange formulation allowing conducting numerical study on the ice melting for various AIS operation cycles , and determining necessary heating power under various gas-hydro-dynamic conditions of the incoming flow.
The authors studied the electro-thermal AIS operation at heating the wing leading edge, consisting of skin, thermo-electro isolation and heating grid. It was determined that barrier ice might form at the boundary of the heated and unheated zones.
The article demonstrates that the wing leading edge heating by the heat flow of 400 W/m2 at the speed of 140 m/s and at the temperature of –10ºC allows increasing the outer skin temperature up to 5ºC and preventing the ice forming.
The AIS low power allows its application for the unmanned aerial system at limited energy resource, which will allow its operation at higher altitudes and under winter conditions, as well as under the Far North conditions.

Keywords:

unmanned aircraft systems, electro-thermal anti-icing system, icing and ice melting numerical modeling, ice thickness on wing surfaces, barrier ice, conjugated heat exchange technique at icing, three-dimensional icing modeling in ANSYS

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