Electro-thermal heating element with a nickel-plated carbon fabric for the leading edge of a wing-shaped composite application

We propose a wing-shaped composite structure that uses an electroless nickel-plated carbon fabric as an electro-thermal heating element, thus improving the electrical and thermal properties. The results showed that the electro-thermal conversion efficiency increased from 0.064 to 0.054 W/°C with increasing plating thickness and weight percentage of the nickel particles deposited. The experiments demonstrated that the surface temperature of the wing-shaped composite could be heated up to 87.9 °C within 1000 s at an applied power density of 2.11 kW/m2. The measurement results agreed well with those of the coupled electro-thermal simulations of heating elements related to a resistance heating phenomenon via an electro-thermal conversion, and it validated the heating performance. In addition, the nickel-plated carbon fabric as a heating element for the leading edge of the wing-shaped model was examined using a multiphysics de-icing simulation under actual icing conditions from a practical perspective. Most of the icing was removed by applying a power density of 2.7 kW/m2 for 600 s to the wing-shaped composite structure. An interlaminar shear strength (ILSS) test was performed to verify the mechanical performance in terms of structural integrity. This practical approach could efficiently offer a desirable solution for the multifunctional de-icing composite field.