| Abstract | An outdoor test rig to enable the operation of a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) in an icing environment has been designed, built and calibrated at the Montreal Road campus of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). This rig had an available test area of 3.05 m x 3.05 m and was 5.1 m high. An array of spray nozzles installed at the top of the test rig provided a cloud that, when operated at sub-zero outdoor temperatures throughout January and February 2023, enabled simulation of in-flight icing conditions. The spray cloud was calibrated to provide water concentration and drop size distributions consistent with Appendix C, freezing drizzle and freezing rain conditions. Six RPAS were tested and showed that the time in which flight in icing could be maintained was as low as 22 seconds for some of the smaller systems examined. Where sufficient data was available, it is shown that above a certain liquid water content (LWC), the time at which the system could sustain flight in icing plateaus and no further increase in water content results in a reduction in the operational envelope. It was also found that the operational limits of the RPAS were independent of the median volumetric diameter (MVD). Generally, despite operating outside the manufacturers’ specified environmental limitations, it was found that the systems tested during this study were able to maintain varying levels of flight in icing conditions. |
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