Aeronautical livery coating with icephobic property

The main problem for the aircrafts is the ice formation on critical components (leading edges, slats, vertical tails, etc.) that decreases reliability and safety of the flights. The objectives of this work are mainly two. The former is to design and develop a new multifunctional coating with aesthetical (livery effect) and icephobic properties other than high adhesion and abrasion resistance. The latter is to design and realise a new tool to use with classical contact angle measurement techniques. This tool allows to replicate the same thermodynamic conditions (in terms of pressure and temperature) present at flight altitude. In fact it was demonstrated that the water contact angle changes, varying at the same time pressure and temperature. The experimental results corroborated the influence of temperature and pressure on the shape of the supercooled water droplet applied on the new icephobic coating. The high durability of the new anti-ice livery coating was determined thorough several mechanical tests such as cutting and tape test, pull-off tests and nanoindentation tests.