Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are a novel technology that are rapidly growing on a global scale. Historically, most UAV applications have been developed by the military, but more recently, a multitude of commercial concepts such as package deliveries or urban air mobility, are emerging. Atmospheric icing is a severe hazard to all aircraft and imposes severe limitations on UAVs in particular. In-flight icing occurs when supercooled liquid droplets in clouds or precipitation collide with an aircraft, causing significant aerodynamic performance degradations. This lecture will give an overview of the physics of atmospheric icing, icing effects, differences between manned and unmanned icing, icing protection systems, and operational challenges. Furthermore, an introduction to numerical methods of icing simulation on aircraft and UAVs is given, focusing on the special challenges of icing at low-Reynolds numbers.
Biography
Richard Hann is a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) on the topic of icing on unmanned aerial vehicles. In 2013, he has graduated with excellence from the University of Stuttgart in Germany as an aerospace engineer. After working for three years the petroleum industry as an upstream project engineer, he returned to academia in 2016 to start a Ph.D. on icing of unmanned aircraft. He is part of the Center of Excellence on Autonomous Marine Operations and Systems (NTNU-AMOS) and Centre for Integrated Remote Sensing and Forecasting for Arctic Operations (CIRFA). Richard has more than 8 years of experience with numerical and experimental icing aerodynamics on wind turbines and aircraft. Today, he is one of the leading researchers in the emerging research field of icing on unmanned aircraft. He holds a position as lead aerodynamics engineer and shareholder at UBIQ Aerospace. Richard is also promoting the application of drone technology in the Arctic with several ongoing projects in the fields of meteorology, glaciology, and atmospheric pollution at the University Centre of Svalbard (UNIS).
