Frost-free planes: back to the drawing board
The buildup of ice on surfaces can cause problems in many situations: On airplane wings or on their engine turbine blades, ice can both add weight and interfere with a wing’s lift, which can make it impossible to take off; on high-voltage electrical lines, the weight of ice can cause lines to snap, causing blackouts and endangering people nearby; and on structures such as oil-drilling rigs, it can make even basic operations treacherous for people trying to work on slippery surfaces. Preventing these icy buildups usually means using deicing materials (salt or glycol), sprinkled or sprayed on a surface, or activating heating coils embedded in the surface material.Deicing chemicals can be toxic, and require constant application, and heating coils waste energy, so researchers have been looking for better ways of handling the problem, ideally through a passive method — one based on chemical or physical properties of the surface, and...