14 DAY TRIAL // In addition to experiencing bitter cold temperatures, the United States also has to deal with thousands upon thousands of canceled flights, since most airlines cannot guarantee that their planes can withstand ice forming on their wings in mid-air. A new sensor currently in the works could soon help reveal when this concern is justified.
Researchers at the University of West Florida (UWF) and West Virginia University (WVU) say that a smoke-like detector for identifying forming ice on airplane wings could make use of alpha particles to operate safely and efficiently at most temperatures, Spectrum IEEE reports.
Ice on wings is a nightmare for pilots because frozen water reduces lift considerably, and can also cause control surfaces to jam and become unresponsive. When this happens, airplanes can fall out of the sky like flies, hence the large number of delays. Ice can stall the engines themselves, too.
The sensor being proposed by the UWF/WVU team is not installed on the wing like previous devices, but becomes part of the wing itself. This would enable it to detect ice forming on control surfaces, rather than ice forming on its own surface. A prototype of the sensor is already undergoing wind tunnel tests.