Driving power supply for an avionic piezoelectric deicing system

Abstract

The ability of a piezoelectric actuator in energy conversion is rapidly expanding in several applications. Some of these applications for which an ultrasound piezoelectric actuator can be used are surface cleaning, metal cutting and welding, and biomedical applications such as needleless drug delivery. A new application of piezoelectric actuators is the Avionic Deicing System. The working frequency of actuator is between 100 kHz and 150 kHz, depending on temperature and ice thickness, and output power levels at several hundreds of Watts. The power supply of piezoelectric actuators has to provide an output voltage of up to 200 VAC at the resonance frequency with low consumption. This article discusses and analyzes a low-consumption electromechanical deicing solution based on piezoelectric actuators, its operating principle, and its driving power supply development supported by experimentations on the setup representative of a part of the Nacelle.