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The European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme has funded the SENS4ICE (Sensors for Certifiable Hybrid Architectures for Safer Aviation in Icing Environment) project [1], an innovative approach for the development and testing of new sensors for the detection of supercooled large droplets (SLD). SLD may impinge behind the protected surfaces of aircraft and therefore represents a threat to aviation safety. The newly developed sensors will be tested in combination with an indirect detection method on two aircraft, in two parallel flight programs: One on the Embraer Phenom 300 in the U.S. and one on the ATR-42 in Europe. In this framework the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (German Aerospace Center) is in charge of the airborne measurements and data evaluation of the microphysical properties of clouds encountered during the SENS4ICE field campaigns in February, March and April 2023.

In 2014 PZL Mielec obtained an EASA Type Certificate extension for the PZL M28 05 airplane for flight into icing conditions and this has been validated by the FAA. Thus, a project that lasted four years was finished successfully. During this period, activities consisted of icing analyses, wind tunnel tests in the NASA Glenn Research Center Icing Research Tunnel, and natural icing flight tests, artificial icing flight tests, flight tests with simulated ice shapes, and calibration tests. Flights in measured natural icing conditions began during the spring of 2009 and certification flight tests were performed in 2012. The natural icing test flights, apart one flight in the USA, were performed in Poland in the Mielec area. The final test campaign can be divided into two phases: (1) March -April flight tests campaign; and (2) November - December flight test campaign, the latter after introducing some design changes in airframe ice protection system.

A large database is being created from icing flight programs completed by aircraft manufacturers for certification and by the NASA-Glenn Research Center for basic research. Although not yet complete, this database already provides an excellent opportunity to study aircraft icing conditions sampled in a wide variety of environments across eastern Canada and most of the United States, including Alaska. In this study, the focus is a comparison of conditions found within boundary-layer stratocumulus icing clouds over the Great Lakes, Pacific Northwest and Alaskan Interior. The clouds will be characterized in terms of temperature, liquid water content, median volumetric diameter, and drop concentration. Critical factors driving these parameters will be discussed.

In the continental United States east of the Rocky Mountains cold fronts are quite common in wintertime due to the many cyclones moving through this region, and icing conditions in the vicinity of cold fronts are a major contributor to the overall occurrence of icing in the atmosphere. The conditions examined in this study will be those behind the cold front. Icing there is often found in stratocumulus clouds that form due to destabilization of the boundary layer through cold air advection and an inversion formed by subsidence aloft which caps their growth. Moist adiabatic lapse rates, small drop sizes, high drop concentrations, and moderate to high liquid water contents depending on the cloud depth often characterize these clouds.

Concepts from algorithms that use observations and numerical model output to diagnose icing conditions aloft also apply well in the near-surface environment, where icing can affect wind turbines, power lines, communications towers and more. The LOWICE system is being developed to leverage proven in-flight icing knowledge to create real-time assessments of the near-surface icing environment.

PZL Mielec is in the process of certificating the ice protection systems installed on the M28 turboprop aircraft so that customers of that aircraft may operate in icing conditions. The M28 airplane is derived from the Antonov An-28, which was certificated in Russia to their icing certification requirements many decades ago. The M28 is equipped with a lot of western equipment, including Pratt and Whitney Canada engines and Hartzell propellers, and now has a no-hazard certification for the use of the installed ice protection system. The M28 ice protection equipment includes wing and tail anti-icing, engine inlet anti-icing, propeller deicing, and wing strut deicing. These systems have undergone a series of development flight tests and icing wind tunnel tests. This paper presents an overview of the flight tests and wind tunnel tests conducted to date.

Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation flew the S-92A® helicopter into natural and tanker artificial icing conditions as part of the certification program for the rotor ice protection system (RIPS). Icing tanker tests were conducted during the late winter of 2004, and natural icing flights were made during the spring of 2004, winter of 2004-05, and early fall of 2005. One goal of the natural icing flight program was to obtain water-dominated icing encounters at temperatures between -15 and -23.33°C. Past studies have shown that mixed-phase icing is often found in this temperature range, and that most icing occurs at temperatures warmer than -15°C. Tanker tests were conducted at specific temperatures at altitudes below about 3 km (10,000 ft), and under prolonged weather conditions meeting visual flight rules (VFR). This represents a challenging combination of conditions to find within a small radius of operation from a given airport.