Abstract:
Aircraft icing is one of the potential hazards that seriously affects flight safety. This paper proposes a plasma ice shape modulation method to ensure flight safety under aircraft icing conditions. This method was verified on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). An ice wind tunnel experiment employing the plasma anti-icing ice shape modulation was carried out to explore the ice shape modulation law. Results show that the plasma ice shape modulation can prevent freezing according to the designed layout and obtain desired modulated ice shapes. The ratio of single ice shape width to chord length, namely the dimensionless ice shape size, and the ratio of single ice shape width to single ice-free gap width, namely the dimensionless modulation ratio determine the control effect. For a fixed dimensionless modulation ratio, the optimal lift coefficient can be obtained with the dimensionless ice shape size between 0.1 and 0.2. The lower the dimensionless modulation ratio, the higher the lift coefficient. The flight test indicates that the ice shape modulation strategy can improve the aerodynamic performance of UAV. Compared with the full icing on the leading edge of the wing, the stall angle is delayed by 4° after the ice shape modulation. Lift coefficient has generally recovered by 20%-30% at high angles of attack. In summary, this paper provides the method and law of ice shape modulation. Choosing appropriate dimensionless ice shape size and modulation ratio will help to obtain the best aerodynamic performance under icing conditions. As research continues, the effectiveness of this method is verified by the flight test of UAV.