Aviation has become an indispensable part of European transportation system, however, the system as it exists today is reaching full capacity and beginning to limit mobility. In addition, there is a demand for more people and goods to travel faster and farther, with fewer delays” as defined by the H2050 target to complete door-to-door journey within 4 hours for 90% of travellers. One solution to increasing mobility in European transportation system is to exploit the existing small community airports across Europe and to improve safety, comfort and operability (especially in all-weather operation - Icing) of the small aircraft community aircrafts. Expand as much as possible the safe operation in all weather conditions, especially in icing conditions, of the small aircraft is a key point. Thus, an efficient and reliable aircraft de-icing system is mandatory to reach this goal. Current de-icing systems are of different types (electrical, pneumatic, hot bleed air from engines) but all are characterized by a high equivalent power required at level on engines: the aircraft De-Icing System is one of the most power demanding onboard systems. For this reason, small aircrafts are sometimes limited in icing operation. This is much actual if we consider that small aircrafts (SAT) are characterized by a limited space availability for system installations, forcing the design solutions in the employment of expansive technologies to minimize the volume of the equipment. This consideration, in combination with the low numbers characterizing the general aviation market, implies the difficulties for the SAT OEMs to find the systems supply chain ready to afford the a/c requirements at a relative low cost (there is a sort of market failure). SEASIDE Project aims at solving the above issues by developing an innovative compact and low cost “Hybrid Electro-Expulsive De-Icing System” for the Piaggio P180 aircraft complying with CS23 Appendix C. Objective of SEASIDE project is to analyse, design, develop, test in an Ice Wind Tunnel Test (IWT) and deliver to the Topic Manager a prototype of Hybrid (thermal and electro-expulsive) De-Icing system. In addition, an objective of SEASIDE Project is to revitalize the European System Supply Chain dedicated to Ice protection System for SAT community by creating suitable low power ice protection system technology at a relative low cost. SEASIDE Partners achieved the project targets designing, manufacturing and testing in the IWT a complete wing model of 2.3m span having the hybrid Ice Protection System installed in. The test was positively conducted simulating 7 different demanding flight ice conditions: the designed hybrid system was able to clean up the leading edge surface in all the tested conditions, requiring less power than the project target of 0.6W per meter of wing span. SEASIDE also performed an assessment of the effort necessary to qualify and certify, according to the CS23 Appendix C regulation, the tested solution. As conclusion, Seaside demonstrated that an affordable hybrid de-icing system combining a small thermal strip with electro-expulsive actuators, controlled by simple electronics, employing European suppliers only can be employed as de-icing system for SAT category.
