Comparative Study of Various Strategies for Multirotor UAV Propeller Icing Mitigation

An experimental study was conducted to compare various strategies for UAV propeller icing mitigation. With a propeller model with an untreated hydrophilic blade as the comparison baseline, three icing protection systems (IPSs) were evaluated systematically: 1) a passive method with the propeller blade coated with a super-hydrophobic surface (SHS) coating; 2) an active IPS design to forcefully heat the entire blade surface; and 3) a hybrid IPS design with only limited surface heating along the blade leading edge and the SHS-coated blade. While the passive method with the SHS-coated blade was found to be only marginally effective under the glaze icing condition, it became ineffective or even further deteriorated the propeller performance under the mixed and rime icing conditions. While the active IPS design to forcefully heat the entire blade surface was found to be able to prevent ice accretion on most of the blade surface, some minor “ice crowns” were still observed to accrete near the blade tip. The hybrid IPS design was demonstrated to keep the entire blade surface ice-free under all the icing conditions with substantially less power consumption (i.e., ∼40% power saving), rendering it a compelling UAV propeller icing mitigation strategy.