The intent of this paper is to provide a general overview of the main engineering and test activities conducted in order to support A350XWB Ice and Rain Protection Systems certification. Several means of compliance have been used to demonstrate compliance with applicable Certification Basis (CS 25 at Amendment 8 + CS 25.795 at Amendment 9, FAR 25 up to Amendment 129) and Environmental protection requirements.
The EASA Type Certificate for the A350XWB was received the 30th September 2014 after 7 years of development and verification that the design performs as required, with five A350XWB test aircraft accumulating more than 2600 flight test hours and over 600 flights.
The flight tests were performed in dry air and measured natural icing conditions to demonstrate the performance of all ice and rain protection systems and to support the compliance demonstration with CS 25.1419 and CS25.21g.
Prior to the flight test campaign, extensive engineering analyses, laboratory tests and system integration tests were completed.
The demonstration of compliance with certification requirements for A350XWB Ice and Rain Protection Systems has been achieved through several means of compliance: system description, engineering analysis, safety assessment, laboratory tests, flight tests in dry air, in rain and in natural icing conditions, aircraft inspection and qualification. This paper focusses on the main means used to demonstrate compliance with the applicable icing requirements.
EASA also approved A350XWB for ETOPS beyond 180min at Entry Into Service. The demonstration has been also performed for the ETOPS diversion distance of 2500 nautical miles followed by hold phase in several ETOPS icing scenarios for the unprotected parts of the wing leading edge, the Horizontal Tail Plane (HTP) and the Vertical Tail Plane (VTP), the wing and nacelle ice protection systems.