Vibration de-icing method with piezoelectric actuators

This work presents the analytic and experimental research of a vibration de-icing method for aircrafts with piezoelectric transducer as the actuator. The maximum displacement of the structure will be achieved when excited at the natural frequencies. The vibration induces shear stress at the interface of the ice and structure, which leads to the shedding off of ice. A shear model of linear Bernoulli-Euler type is derived with ice attached to a flat plate, which is capable of predicting the shear stress along the interface and gives guidance to the choice of vibration modes for de-icing. The finite element method (FEM) is used to get the relationship between the length of piezoelectric actuator and the vibration intensity of the modes to be excited. The optimal length is determined in order to maximize the shear stress. The results indicate that peak values of the shear stress at the interface appear at the edges of the ice, and the amplitudes depend upon the strains on the surface of plate underlying the edges of ice. For a specific mode the maximum excitation happens when the length of piezoelectric actuator is an odd integer multiple of the half wavelength of that mode. Actually the optimal length would be a slightly longer due to the influence of the actuator. Finally, experimental investigations on a clamped aluminum plate are carried out to verify the results of the analysis. The power consumption for vibration de-icing is about 36.5 w/m2, which is only 1.57 % of the power consumption when using the latest electro-thermal de-icing method.