Air Vehicle Systems
Aircraft Safety, Icing Hazard Mitigation
The accretion of ice onto an aircraft’s wings or rotor blades in poor weather conditions can lead to critical and tragic failure. Maintaining all-weather operation of vertical lift aircraft with detection and avoidance of icing hazards is a crucial mission, where flight safety implementation in Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is a critical gap.
For example, this problem is growing more pronounced with the emerging realities of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to deliver packages to the home and more importantly maintaining passenger and crew safety in air taxis. Prevention of rotorcraft icing, as well as the associated mitigation strategies and tools are a key challenge that CUA and our partner the University of Illinois are investigating for the future enhancement of air vehicle safety.