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Science Technology

Ice Sensor Protects Aircraft 22

Posted by michael from the knock-off-the-icicles dept.
opticsorg writes "Flying in bad weather could soon be safer thanks to a highly sensitive optical ice sensor designed for use on aircraft and helicopters. The sensor can detect a layer of ice that is as little as 100 microns thick."
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Ice Sensor Protects Aircraft More

Ice Sensor Protects Aircraft

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  • 1/2 of it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by annisette ( 682090 ) <fdnewell@hotmail.com> on Friday September 05, 2003 @10:13AM (#6879164)
    Sounds like a good idea though there is the situation of de-icing the wing and tail surface areas. There are mechanical methods, an air expanding boot on the wing areas and electrical heat methods. I wonder if lasers can be used for this, any flying nerds out there with ideas? ( I mean pilots)

  • Better yet (Score:3, Funny)

    by eyepeepackets ( 33477 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @10:24AM (#6879268)

    A variation on this theme: an emotional ice detector for attachment to human females. Such a device would be a great boon to humanity.

  • I'd rather not let the ice form (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SLot ( 82781 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @10:32AM (#6879353) Homepage Journal
    in the first place. Seems these folks are on the
    right track:

    Platinum Research [platinumresearch.com]

    If they can bond teflon to aircraft wings, the detectors won't
    matter, as ice can't form. :)

  • This sounds great but... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TEB ( 566487 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @10:59AM (#6879629)
    I don't see it being adopted in the industry.

    I worked for a company that developed a system to monitor the aerodynamic performance of an aircraft. It was sensitive enough to measure the degradation caused by frost or dead bugs on the wings. It would have replaced the strictly angle of attack based stall warning systems in use. The system was simple and reliable. It also had a small footprint in the cockpit. The system never sold due to the reluctance of the airlines to adopt systems that add cost to an aircraft and complexity to the cockpit.

    A good example would be the collision avoidance systems marketed by a number of companies. These systems have been available for many years. They were not widely adopted until an FAA mandate that all commercial aircraft of a certain size and larger must be fitted with these systems. That happened back in the mid 90's.

    I may be wrong (and I hope I am) but I don't believe that there will be a rush to install systems based on this technology unless it's very cheap or the FAA mandates it.

    • Sorry to hear about your misfortune and I agree compleatly with you that they should have them. With a good airplane (even the single engine ones) costing hundred of thousands dollars an extra ten grand or so will not make them unattractive to buyers. Complexity of the cockpit? sounds like they were looking for straws, I wonder if the designers occasionaly forget about the demension of up and down with flying aircraft. Then there is the 70's era of airtraffic control systems.... Good luck with your furure e
    • From the article:
      A plane may need up to 10 or more sensors fitted over its fuselage and impending legislation from the US's federal aviation authority (FAA) is likely to require that from 2005 all new light aircraft are fitted with tailplane ice sensing equipment.

      So the FAA mandate is impending (according to the article), and also according to the article there are other methods of detection but their placement and use locations are limited because of their size, which implies that ice sensing equipment

      • The APM system I used as an example was not for icing detection specifically. Although it did have that capability. It was a real time indicator of aerodynamic performance and would allow a pilot to see that as the aircrafts profile changed. The main use would have been for stall warning. Most all stall warning systems are mechanical and based on angle of attack. The stall angle is based on the assumption of a "clean" aircraft profile. They fail when the profile has changed due to icing or other changes. So

  • Two questions are cost and how often the sensor gives false positives. If it gives too many false positives, then pilots will ignore it.

  • Icing vs Spatial Disorientation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by roseblood ( 631824 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @11:45AM (#6880066)
    Funny that icing problems are USUALY found in flight in IFR (instrument flight rules) conditions and not nearly as often under VFR (visual flight rules.) One of the biggest killers of IFR pilots in mid-flight (as opposed to takeoff and landing operations) if spatial disorientation. This is where the inner ear plays havok with a pilots sense of "which way is up?" Most often the pilot will correct for a non-existant problem with roll or pitch and end up departing from controlled flight, entering a spin that either results in collision with terrain or an in-flight breakup of the aircraft. This problem is most easily avoided by use of an automatic pilot or flight-director system. Ice IS a killer, but SD is a greater killer, so perhaps the money that would be spent installing these ice-detection systems on aircraft would be best used to install autopilots and/or flight directors on aircraft instead.

    Let it be noted that nearly all aircraft used for commercial use worldwide do have autopilot systems, and commercial pilots worldwild have the LOWEST risk for SD, due to a system were the aicraft is controlled soley by a computerized system that gets its information from reliable instruments, as opposed to the human organs that evolved to provide stability on the ground. Most commercial flights also have more than one crew member, and with proper CRM (cockpit resource management) any deviation from controlled flight will be noted by at least 1 or 2 unaffected crewmembers. For these commecrial pilots the greatest threat to their saftey comes from a breakdown in procedures durring landing or takeoff operations. These breakdowns results in off-airport landings, controlled flight into terrain, wrong runway landings, or runway incursions(traffic accidents involving vehicles getting in the wrong places at the wrong time on the ground.)

    Another great killer of airmen is inflight engine failure due to insuffecient fuel (either out of av-gas or fuel selection levers set to draw fuel from empty tanks) or fuel contamination by water (usualy due to inproper pre-flight inspection. This is also a greater threat than in-flight icing. Again, perhaps effort should be devoted to fuel management systems and watter detection systems.

    The situation is somewhat like spending more money on America's #4 killer, as opposed to numbers 1 and 2 combined (AIDS, Heart Disease, and Cancer respectively.) It only makes sense to address the #1 threat first before concentrating on #2, and so forth..in the aviation world #1 is TRAINING, to avoid accidents through ignorance, and #2 in MAINTENCE, to avoid accidents from mechanical faults. Most aviation accidents come from a failure (or delay) of an aviator to apply their training to a situation (avoiding flight into icing conditions, using a proper cross-checking instrument scan when in IMC[instrument meterological conditions], confirming your fuel state and fuel quality BEFORE engine run-up, etc.)

    So, this iceing detection system is good news, but it'd be like us throwing money at a somewhat (in relative terms) minor problem, when larger threats are killing aiviators on a regular basis. As an earlier poster pointed out, airlines didn't install TCAS systems to prevent in-flight colllisions until the FAA mandated it, because they'd rather have spent the money on what they felt to be a bigger threat (and to increase their profit margin as well.)

    Well, I've rambled on...time to call it quits while i'm ahead
    • Very well put. Most of the accidents can be lumped under the heading of "Human error". Accidents that are caused by weather conditions that are beyond the pilots control (ie wind shear) are much rarer. Equipment that address the human aspect will do more to reduce the accident rates.

      I just want to make a comment on controlled flight into terrain. One system in development before I left my previous employer was TAWS (Terrain Awareness and Warning System). I didn't do too much work on that as I was on the TC

    • Yeah...I know. Just being picky (and offtopic).

      Unless AIDS has dramatically increased in the past few years, it doesn't even make the top tell killers list in the US.

      Here are some links:
      AIDS deaths by country [bartleby.com]
      Power Point presentation for cancer [cancer.org](page 2 has the top killers in the US).
    • There was a crash involving a commercial aircraft here in Indiana, It was in a holding patteren for some time in icing conditions and with autopilot "on" when the pilot switched the autopilot off to decend after being given clearance the pilots were unable to match the control settings the autopilot set quick enough, the plane rolled and corrections by the flight crew over stressed the planes structure limits, the tail section broke off, all lives lost. Icing conditions can happen anywhere any time of the y
      • The parent shows the real problem with the "icing isn't the biggest problem" argument -- it may not be the biggest problem, but when ice is the cause of a flight failure, it seems to happen in a spectacular and mysterious way.

        Also, if I recall correctly, crashes like the 1994 Roselawn, Indiana [emergency.com] crash are particularly difficult to trace back to their root cause. Then, when icing is found to be the cause, future crashes [cnn.com] without obvious causes are compared against previous mystery crashes. There's nothing th
    • The situation is somewhat like spending more money on America's #4 killer, as opposed to numbers 1 and 2 combined...

      I am not too much of an expert in flight and such, so I don't want to comment there. Also, not to take issue with the above either, as I am not a doctor either. But the logic here is not fully thought out.

      There are a couple reasons that research goes on at multiple levels, whether the most extreme or the least extreme.

      The above logic is complained about often in computers too. For insta
  • Another use for the ice sensor is to blow the whistle on the boneheads at Taco Bell, who keep giving me Super-sized Cokes with 99% crushed ice and one teaspoon of beverage.

    Run for the border, cheap bastards -- I'm on to you!!! *beep beep beep!*

  • Ok about sensors that detect ice build up on aircraft, but what about detection of the elephants that acctually make up the clouds?

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