Leading edge heating elements?

This is another one of those "does this exist?" ideas that I come up as I'm driving home from work. Has anyone ever heard of, or thought of doing, leading edge heating elements? I'm thinking of like a low-current screen or mesh, like is embedded in (most of) our cars' rear windows, bonded to the inside of the leading edges, especially the wings, which would warm up the skin just enough.

Before red alarms go off, this is by no means an excuse for FIKI. More along the lines of if you're flying along in the winter and start to collect the beginnings of light ice, some frost... or for that matter, if you're not hangared, kick this on during taxi and runup to slough off the morning frost that much more quickly.

Not saying it's a good idea in any means. I just happened to stare at the defroster wire screen in the rear of my car yesterday as I left work, and like I said, the brain went "what if?".

Excuse me while I go put on the flame-retardant suit for the inevitable "you're out of your mind / this is beyond stupid" replies.

The only solution that I've seen is:

http://www.rddent.com/products/therm_x_

It's for a RV-10. At $18k for parts and $10k for installation. Not to mention a 75v 100amp alternator and a 40lb penalty to add to the mix. I'm sure it's something not very many will even consider.

At least you put the suit on first. I would do a 180 or climb/descent to get out of ice as quickly as possible. As far as on the ground, one would want to clear all frost/ice before taxiing from the entire plane with warm de-ice fluid, 91% isopropyl alcohol or windshield deicer. What Bob said...$ and weight. Then you still would only protect 10% of what needs protecting. A winsdhield defogger would be nice though in the winter. I am thinking we would need glass in front for that- very heavy. My two computer fans work nicely combined with climbing into drier air, but it takes 5-10 minutes with the family on board.

I am actually hoping for a product such as neverwet hit the market really soon. It seems very promising.

http://www.neverwet.com/

I've done natural icing flight tests on several different aircraft types that had heated leading edges.

You need a lot of heat to do a good job. If you have just enough heat to melt the ice, the liquid water drops from the melted ice will flow aft along the surface and then freeze in a ridge at the aft edge of the heated area. The effect of this ridge on the upper leading edge is probably worse than if you had just left the ice alone.

If you want to avoid the ridge, you need enough heat to evaporate the water before it gets to the aft edge of the heated area. I.e. you need to boil the water.

In summary, this idea will probably make things worse.

Yeah I started thinking about that at lunch today, Kevin. The original "in theory" idea was the frost would just slough off from flight. But a thin enough frost layer, and yeah the water just gets shoved back a few inches, onto the main wing surface, and now you're even more screwed. And it's obviously not effective to put such a heater mesh in the whole surface underside.

Okay, we've put this one to bed. Like I said, it was one of those "in theory" ideas when I stared at my rear window. Then I looked at my car manual and realized it was a 40 amp fuse for that defroster circuit.

The neverwet looks interesting. Sort of like Rain-X for aviation. Might have to look into that.

Back to riveting tonight...

definitely has promise

Bavafa said:

I am actually hoping for a product such as neverwet hit the market really soon. It seems very promising.

http://www.neverwet.com/

Click to expand...

The field of nano-tech has come up with some great inovations over the last 5-10 years. I've been following the "anti-water" technology for a while now. I think it has great promise as an airplane anti-ice technology. Obviously we're quite a few years out, but think about the posibilities if you put this stuff in paint or as a clear coat on top. Right now it's just a "possibility" but I'm excited to see if anybody can turn that into reality.

Thermawing

You mean something like this:
http://www.kellyaerospace.com/thermalsystems/thermawing_aircraft_deice.html

Looks like only for plastic airplanes. Although they were talking about getting an STC for Barons, they no longer mention it on their website.

i'm just spitballing here but if i had to guess, a "weeping wing" would probably be more practical in a "oh ****" situation. a couple holes, hoses, a pump, reservoir, and mesh could be done up fairly easily (at least in my head. i have no expertise here). i'm sure certified systems would be in the 10s of thousands though.