Improving mechanical ice protection systems with substrate shape optimization

International audience; Mechanical and electro-mechanical de-icing systems are low-energy ice protection solutions based on fracturemechanisms. It can, however, be difficult to obtain the protection of an entire surface due to the limited propagation of fractures for some mechanisms. This article shows how it is possible to reshape the substrate in orderto favor the propagation of adhesive fracture at the ice/substrate interface. The first part of the paper introducesan analytical beam theory approach for running computations quickly, making it possible to achieve parametricoptimization of the substrate thickness and maximize the propagation length. The optimization results werevalidated using FEM software and tests on an aluminum prototype. A second method is also studied in this paper,topology optimization is used on a 2D finite element model to minimize the substrate mass of the proposedsolution and adhesive crack propagation is assessed in comparison with the mass impact. For different boundaryconditions, propagation ranges can be increased by up to 150% with a mass increase limited to 50%. Usingtopology optimization, the additional mass could be reduced by 60% while maintaining the sameperformances.