Ice be gone

Some of the coolest technology is created — or re-created in this case — in some of the smallest labs.

James Wiebe from Radiant Instruments has been working on an aircraft deicing project in cooperation with Comp Air Aviation. The company’s model 6.2 single-engine six-seat composite aircraft (pictured above) is designed to go high, where ice sometimes lives, and company officials tapped James to solve that issue.

Rather than use de-icing boots or fluid leaked onto the wings and tail surfaces, Wiebe is updating a system using an electromagnetic pulse to “deform the skin” of an airplane to shed ice.

Hmm.

While deforming the skin of an aircraft doesn’t sound like a good thing, James is much smarter than I am, so I suppose he and Comp Air will work out the details.

From James’ video on the subject:

Using a capacitor to store the energy, roughly 1,000 volts can be discharged through a coil at a peak current of roughly 1,000 amps. As James says in the video, “do the math.”

OK. 

Well, he helps. 1,000 volts times 1,000 amps equals 1,000,000 watts hitting the aluminum, or any conducive surface, over the period of one ten-thousandth of a second.

That’ll pack quite a punch.

“Think of a rubber mallet hitting a large flat surface,” James suggested during a telephone call.

It doesn’t permanently deform the surface, but creates quite a blow or shock to the surface.

In another example, if you’ve ever played with magnets, you know what it is like to try to hold two positive ends together. That’s kind of what this system is doing — except the magnets in this example only come to life when energy is applied. The watts hit the magnets and they want to get away from each other, quickly and forcefully.

Raytheon’s Premier I was certified with an electro-magnetic system on its tail.

“Jolted with electrical energy pulses that last .0005 seconds, the coils deliver impact accelerations of over 10,000 Gs to the airfoil skin once a minute, shedding ice as thin as .06 inch,” wrote Tim Wright in a March 2004 Smithsonian Magazine article. “Despite the high G-load, the impact amplitude — the amount of movement of the aircraft skin — is only about .025 inch. The skin accelerates so rapidly, though, that ice de-bonds as if hit with a hammer.”

What I really enjoyed about James’ video was his anecdotal evidence of the effectiveness of this system as shown in his tests. He turns the camera toward the ceiling where we can see it pock-marked with numerous dents. Beyond the anecdotal evidence, he demonstrates the basics of the system on a variety of products including a pan with a layer of frozen water.

That example at the 6:45-minute mark, near the end of the video, shatters the ice. I imagine those sheets of ice then falling away from my aircraft. Sweet relief.

Of course there is more work and testing to come. After all, James is still at the R&D stage, as noted in the video.

Bringing this technology to the lighter end of aviation will improve safety and the utility of aircraft.

And that is cool.