CHOPIN

The project:

The aircraft industry has long been concerned with the increase of drag impacting directly the fuel consumption of airplanes. Different researches have shown that the insect sticking causes a surface roughness disrupting the laminar flow. To avoid this, the use of coatings to miti-gate the insect contamination has started to show prom-ising results. However, some critical issues remain un-solved, such as the lack of durability .

The objectives of the project CHOPIN are : the development of highly durable hydrophobic coatings which can be applied to micro-perforated surfaces typically used for drag reduction and the validation of the technology and the coating process by using tests to clearly assess the mitigation of insect contamination under realistic conditions.

Different technologies are being considered in the project to obtain hydrophobic surfaces :wet-chemistry deposition and dry technologies (plasma and spray).

Our role:

The main role of CIDETEC within CHOPIN project is the development of coatings for the aircraft industry aiming for novel solutions against insect contamination, to keep the high efficiency of the natural laminar flow (NLF), but also hybrid laminar flow control (HLFC) leading edges as drag reduction technology. Among other activities, CIDETEC leads WP3 based on the development of such coatings and WP2, where the project specifications are established.