PFI-TT: Development and Flight Tests of an Aircraft Safety System

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation – Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is aviation safety, in particular the development of an icing detection system. Ice is a major cause of aircraft accidents, even for airplanes approved for flight in icing conditions like commercial transport jet aircraft. Indeed, through customer discovery, the team found that there is a need for new icing detection technologies that respond directly to changes in the US Code of Federal Regulations as well as the new certification requirements of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

In addition to aviation, the technologies proposed technologies could be used to detect ice hazards on bridges, roads, and other infrastructure systems.

The proposed project will develop and flight test a complete aircraft icing detection system. Recent changes in Aircraft Certification Specifications (ACS) requires new types of icing detection systems that do not yet exist in the market. Supercooled Large Droplets (SLD) have caused several airplane accidents in the last few decades.

In most General Aviation (GA) airplanes ice detection currently consists simply of notifications that the air temperature is near or below 0 degrees Celcius; However, temperature measurements alone are not enough for detecting the presence of hazardous icing conditions. Commercial and Business Aviation airplanes have more complex icing detection systems, but they only measure ice accumulation on mounted probes and may not measure ice on other areas of the plane, resulting in hazardous flight conditions.

The proposed system is capable of probing the airspace around airplanes, detecting SLDs, measuring cloud liquid water content, and detecting ice accretion where ice can create hazardous flight conditions. This project will also contribute to the education of engineering students interested in entrepreneurship.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.