Airflow and Thermal Analysis of UAV De-Icing Systems

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has been increasing around the world as many countries have been rapidly adding UAVs to their arsenals during the past decade. One of the most critical challenges facing UAV designers is icing. Icing has long been known to be dangerous for aircraft. A pilot, though, can recognize icing conditions and compensate for them by either activating de-icing systems or by adjusting to the changing flight characteristics of the aircraft and removing the aircraft from the icing conditions. The current generation of US Military UAVs deployed in Afghanistan had issues with icing that caused many crashes, costing millions of dollars. This led to the development of UAV design variants with deicing systems.