On-Wing Temperature Estimation and Control for Anti-Icing System on Aircraft

Anti-icing and de-icing systems for aircraft wings are an extensively studied topic for many decades. Most of those systems try to determine if icing-conditions are present and prevent the wing from icing by a simple heating process. The determination of icing-conditions is either done visually by the pilot or by dedicated sensors. However, due to the harsh-conditions and high velocity of aircraft's, measuring conditions such as temperature is very difficult. Consequently, the sensor information is very uncertain and for safety reasons the demand of heating energy is over-estimated. Also, the sensor units do not measure the on-wing temperature directly due to thermal resistances coupled with air and the wing. Hence, to obtain the actual on-wing temperature, statistical filtering methods are implemented and used by the controller of the heating system in order to stabilize the temperature on the wing surface. This prevents the wing from icing without over-heating which is beneficial for energy savings. This paper introduces an approach to accurately estimate and control the on-wing temperature using a wireless on-wing sensor.