Anagrafe della ricerca

The general objective of the project ICELESS (Ice Control Enabled via a Low-Energy Smart System) is to define a novel approach for the ice control, integrating different cutting-edge technologies (nanotechnology, smart materials, electronics, ultrasound, data processing) within a platform fitted out with its own automatism, in order to reduce the energy demand and to overcome the lack of application flexibility and adaptivity of current solutions against icing phenomena. The innovative idea of the project is that ice control can be broken down into a few main actions (prevention, identification, removal) and they can be fulfilled by means of a distributed transducer network with a flexible architecture (i.e. tunable with the specific application) and a proper operation control unit built around this network. Namely, this process enables to capture event flows (warnings), elaborate and locate them, send/(re)distribute the appropriate actions all over the transducer networks with the highest efficiency and the lowest possible power, enabling a collective distributed coordination. This idea is fulfilled by combining the use of liquid-super repellent and heating surfaces along with ultrasound, handled by distributed transducers acting as sensors or actuators or both. When these technologies meet together, the major advantage is that ice protection is achieved with the lowest energy demand possible. In detail, it is expected that nanostructured organic/inorganic hybrid coatings with static and dynamic superhydrophobicity, applied on the target surface, inhibit the ice accretion or weaken the ice adhesion strength without any power supply. The electric heating coating based on biological charcoal enables an efficient control of surface temperature with energy saving. Meanwhile, ultrasound, benefiting from these actions, contributes both to hinder frost formations and to detect or remove ice buildup inducing shear stresses at the ice-structure interface sufficient to enable the detachment. In this context, sensing devices generate “contextualized streams” of data representing events about something that is happening somewhere on the structure. Otherwise, actuating devices receive “contextualized commands streams” related to what they should do over time. This process demands for proper management to operate autonomously and in real-time. It is indeed challenging to ensure low operating-energy and proper feedback in a variety of conditions and applications. To achieve this ambitious aim, ICELESS consortium brought together specialists from universities and research institutes with different, but complementary backgrounds to address all the project facets. This is how the technologies conceived to address icing challenges and the hardware/software solutions demanded for their coordination are investigated thoroughly within ICELESS in a strong interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaboration among partners.