High Altitude Ice Crystals
HAIC (High Altitude Ice Crystals) is an integrated FP7-AAT type L2 project, which aims to analyze ice particles at high altitude and improve aircraft safety when flying in clouds and in icing conditions.
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project title: High Altitude Ice Crystals
Capacity Program: Ctr. 219 EU/18-07-2013
Project acronym: HAIC
The total budget of the project (in EURO): 22,876,816.80
Project duration (months): 48
Project start date (month/year): September/2012
Project completion date (month/year): September/2016
Project summary
The main objective of HAIC is to allow the European aeronautical industry to face the challenges related to the evolution of EASA and ICAO regulations regarding the improvement of aircraft performance and the increase of flight safety in low clouds and in icing conditions.
The research will address a wide range of innovative concepts, solutions and technologies that will lead to increasing the safety of the basic infrastructures of the air traffic system: airports and air traffic management, as well as improving integrated security solutions.
International cooperation is encouraged in fields related to high-altitude atmospheric physics and flight safety, especially when standardization issues are taken into account.
The project will contribute to the achievement of the technological objectives provided by the ACARE 2020 Vision: reducing the accident rate by 80%; achieving a substantial improvement in the elimination and recovery of human error.
HAIC aims to improve the support necessary for the European aeronautical industry to meet the demands related to the evolution of regulations regarding the impact of icing phenomena in low clouds and other freezing conditions by characterizing the water content at high altitudes. Another objective is the development of test facilities and numerical tools to improve flight operations in icing conditions. The improvement of flights is intended to be achieved through the development of specialized technologies for determining icing conditions through the possibility of alerting the plane’s crew, thus continuously increasing the safety of the flight.
The technical objectives of the project are: characterization of the atmosphere at high altitudes; development of test instruments for the characterization of icing conditions during test flights; development of detectors for icing produced in freezing conditions and supercooled water; the consolidation and adaptation of the wind tunnels to allow the reproduction of icing conditions in the atmosphere; modeling the phenomenon of ice accumulation, particle trajectories; model validation.