Deicing of a GLAss fiber REinforced aluminum laminate – Part 1: Experiments and numerical simulation

Deicing is a mandatory procedure to ensure the required aerodynamic lift of aircraft. Countless experimental and numerical investigations have been conducted to determine the deicing efficiency of various ice protection systems. The literature review, however, yielded no single study that has been dedicated to investigate the deicing performance of a GLAss fiber REinforced aluminum (GLARE)-based electro-thermal ice protection system. Of notes, the upper fuselage of the front- and the rear section of Airbus A380 comprises circa 469 m2 of GLARE. This study, therefore, proposed a phase change model based on thermo-dynamics to determine the power consumption and the de-icing performance of a GLARE laminate embedded with recurring S-shaped copper heater elements. The model addressed the influence of copper mesh length and orthotropic properties of GLARE on deicing. As a test case, the power budget for deicing a GLARE 5A-3/2 laminate was predicted numerically. The numerical analysis demonstrated that a surface power density of 14.62 kW/m2 sufficed to deice a GLARE 5A-3/2 laminate covered with a 0.8 mm thick ice layer at an ambient temperature of 267.15 K. To corroborate the numerical predictions, deicing experiments had been conducted in a miniature icing wind tunnel by incorporating icing conditions comparable to that of the numerical analysis. It was found that the predicted surface power density was in excellent agreement with that determined in the deicing experiment. In the experiment, an infrared camera measured the temperature gradient of the GLARE specimen, which was also in close proximity to that of the GLARE model in the numerical analysis.