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Ice Sensor Protects Aircraft
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."
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)
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth
Adding one of these to Titanic (the movie) would have made it a really boring movie. Oh wait... well, I suppose the dude getting cut in half was pretty sweet.
A variation on this theme: an emotional ice detector for attachment to human females. Such a device would be a great boon to humanity.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
in the first place. Seems these folks are on the
:)
right track:
Platinum Research
If they can bond teflon to aircraft wings, the detectors won't
matter, as ice can't form.
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.
Karma: Positive. Mostly affected by the lack of a karma joke in your sig.
Two questions are cost and how often the sensor gives false positives. If it gives too many false positives, then pilots will ignore it.
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
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
All leading wing and tail surfaces.
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth
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?
In Soviet Russia, the profit overlords welcome you!