Flight Test Results for Performance-Based Ice Detection

Abstract

Supercooled large droplets (SLD) icing conditions have been the cause of severe aircraft accidents over the last decades. Existing countermeasures, even on modern airplanes, are not necessarily effective against the resulting ice formations, which raises a demand for reliable detection of SLD conditions for safe operations. New ice detection approaches and innovative sensor hybridization targeting a fast and reliable SLD-ice detection are the core of the EU funded Horizon 2020 project SENS4ICE. The performance-based (indirect) ice detection methodology is key to this hybrid detection approach and based on the changes of airplane flight characteristics under icing influence. The paper provides an overview on the indirect ice detection (IID) algorithm developed in SENS4ICE together with some exemplary results from both SENS4ICE flight test campaigns in North America (USA, February/March 2023) and Europe (France, April 2023).