InSPIRe

Reference TP90 aircraft Leonardo ©Leonardo S.p.A.

In the current development of the More-Electric Aircraft technological portfolio, a fully electric wing ice protection system plays the key role to eliminate current bleed air and pneumatic devices. The adoption of an electrothermal ice protection system allows easy integration with laminar wings and/or morphing leading edges, thus being more suitable for implementation in the future regional aircraft.

To meet the design and energy constraints, the solution proposed by InSPIRe is geared towards:

• optimizing the areas that are ice protected and their power distribution in the morphing leading-edge;
• optimizing the heater scheduling and the control logic;
• exploring the potential for removing the energy intense parting strip to minimize power consumption for a thermal de-ice system to be suitable for a Regional platform;
• applying an innovative, light weight, highly reliable and durable electrothermal technology integrated into the LE composite structure.

Performance verification are pursued by means of an Icing Wind Tunnel (IWT) test campaign to contribute to reaching TRL5 for the selected IPS technologies.