An Exploratory Study on the Usage of Dielectric-Barrier-Discharge (DBD) Plasma Actuators for UAV Propeller Icing Mitigation

An exploratory study is conducted to investigate the efficiency of using Dielectric-Barrier- Discharge (DBD) Plasma Actuators for Unmanned-Aerial-Vehicles (UAVs) propellers' icing mitigation. Several studies have shown promising results using DBD plasma actuators for fixed-wing icing control. This research explores a novel anti-/de-icing system that leverages the thermal effects of DBD plasma actuation for UAV propellers. An experimental setup was built to allow the operation of DBD plasma actuation on UAV propellers with rotation speeds of up to 4,000 rpm. DBD plasma Actuators were applied around the leading edge of a 3D-printed representative 9-inch UAV propeller. Three different actuator layouts were designed and tested in the Icing Research Tunnel at Iowa State University (i.e., ISU-IRT) to evaluate the anti-/de-icing performance of the DBD plasma actuation. Initial experiments reveal promising results with all three actuator layouts showing excellent ice protection capabilities under glaze icing conditions. Further efforts remain required to fully characterize the ice protection capabilities of DBD Plasma Actuators on UAV propellers and to optimize the design paradigms.