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."

Comments

This looks very promising

[Anemomenous Cowherd]

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

[roseblood]

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

Re:Icing vs Spatial Disorientation

[FroMan]

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 instance, people who will say that we should research more into high speed large storage instead of processor speed, because the bottle neck is at the getting data to the processor, not the processor.

Some research is more expensive than others, or someone has a clever idea and moves in that direction. Research is good, whether is it going to solve one persons problem or a million people's problem. Another advantage of research in one particularly easy area is that you might find applicable details that work in another area.

Just a prespective you may want to keep in mind. Another is that you are not the one spending your money on creating ice sensors, someone else is. And they evidently feel it is worth spending money there instead of being a pilot training facility.