Utilization of Thermal Effect Induced by Plasma Generation for Aircraft Icing Mitigation

An explorative investigation was performed to demonstrate the feasibility of using a thermal effect induced by dielectric-barrier-discharge plasma generation for aircraft icing mitigation. The experimental study was performed in an icing research tunnel available at Iowa State University. A NACA 0012 airfoil/wing model embedded with dielectric-barrier-discharge plasma actuators was installed in the icing research tunnel under typical glaze-/rime-icing conditions pertinent to aircraft inflight icing phenomena. While a high-speed imaging system was used to record the dynamic ice-accretion process over the airfoil surface for the test cases with and without plasma generation, an infrared thermal imaging system was used to map the corresponding temperature distributions to quantify the unsteady heat transfer and phase changing process over the airfoil surface. For the typical glaze-ice condition, the thermal effect induced by dielectric-barrier-discharge plasma generation was demonstrated to be able to prevent ice accretion over the airfoil surface during the entire ice-accretion experiment. The measured quantitative surface temperature distributions were correlated with the acquired images of the dynamic ice-accretion and water runback processes to elucidate the underlying physics.