Highlight Lecture
WEB Enhanced anti-icing and de-icing of a titanium airfoil through Direct Laser Interference Patterning
Wednesday (23.09.2020) 11:50 - 12:05 F: Functional Materials, Surfaces, and Devices 2 Part of:Forward facing aerodynamic surfaces are susceptible to ice build-up on the leading edge when exposed to atmospheric icing conditions. If not removed, accumulated ice can add excessive weight and alter the airfoil configuration. For aircrafts, this can cause undesirable and dangerous flying performances and drastically reduce the operational capability. Conventional approaches to reduce the icing on aircraft surfaces rely on functional coatings such as Teflon or PMMA. However, short/ultra-short pulsed laser treatments have been proposed as an alternative technology in the past to generate superhydrophobic properties on metallic surfaces.
In several examples, the correlation between topography and surface chemistry with superhydrophobicity has been investigated. Moreover, ice adhesion reduction through laser texturing has been also proved on flat samples [1]. A well-established laser technique able to produce periodic structures in the micro- and sub-micrometer range is Direct Laser Interference Patterning (DLIP). The DLIP method relies on the overlap of two or more coherent laser beams on the sample, where an interference pattern is created. At the intensity maxima positions the material is directly treated, while at the minima it remains unaffected, creating features with dimensions much smaller than the used beam size. Moreover, it has been shown that DLIP provides promising results under static icing condition, increasing the freezing time.
In this work, DLIP has been employed to treat a Ti6Al4V NACA 0012 airfoil, fabricating complex hierarchical microstructures with a periodicity of 2.6 µm directly on the non-planar surface geometry. The icing performances of the microtextured airfoil was assessed in an icing wind tunnel (iCORE) under representative dynamic icing conditions. The results show a considerable decrease in the power necessary to keep the surface free of ice, a drastic decrease in the time for ice removal and a spontaneous ice shedding effect under representative icing conditions.
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| Extended Abstract | Abstract for the lecture | abstract | 134 KB | Download |
