IDT sensors for detection of ice on rotorcraft

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IDT sensors for detection of ice on rotorcraft

Varadan, V.V. / Varadan, V.K. / Bao, X.Q.

IDT (interdigital transducers) offer significant potential for detecting ice formation on rotorcraft applications. Sensing of flex beam deflection and acceleration, ice formation and deicing are major candidate areas where smart conformal IDT and MEMS based sensors can be exploited by the rotorcraft community. The major technical barrier of the present day smart structures technology is the need for wired communication between sensors and actuators in the rotating system and controllers, data storage units, and cockpit avionics. Many proposed sensors and actuators are commonly distributed either along the blade length or, in the active flap devices, out near the 75% blade radial station. Also they are not conformal to the airfoil shape of the rotor blades. The communication between rotating and fixed systems is typically accomplished using complex slip ring assemblies transferring electronic information down through the rotor shaft. Although advances have been made in wired communication, these complex assemblies are essentially similar to test hardware and present numerous reliability and maintainability limitations when implemented on a production scale. Considering these limitations, development of a wireless means of communication through a new generation of conformal sensors with built-in antenna, akin to telemetry, could have a dramatic beneficial payoff for rotorcraft applications. In this paper, an integration of IDT microsensors and MEMS sensors is presented.