UAV Icing: Validation of a numerical model to calculate the Temperature of an Ice Protection System for a Propeller of a UAV

In-flight icing on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) propellers can lead to severe aerodynamic performance degradation or even complete loss of the UAV. Ice protection systems (IPS) are used to enable the flight of UAVs in icing conditions by protection aerodynamically critical surfaces such as wings and propellers. In this study an electro-thermal ice protection system is studied for the propeller of a small-medium fixed-wing UAV. This study aims to optimize the electro-thermal IPS design to increase efficiency and reduce the required power of the propeller IPS using numerical conjugated heat transfer (CHT) simulations within ANSYS FENSAP-ICE. The numerical simulations are validated using existing literature values and new experimental data acquired in icing wind tunnel tests. The conditions of the simulations and experiments are representative for realistic and critical in-flight conditions to examine the ETIPS performance, the required heat fluxes and temperature distributions for a better understanding of the underlying phenomena during the process of anti-icing. This is important to improve already existing ETIPS setups by enlarging the heated area and improve the internal temperature distribution by integrating a highly thermally conductive layer. These approaches lay the foundation for future ETIPS and enable UAVs to operate in potential icing conditions.