SUMMARY
Low adhesion coatings are a key technology in order to diminish the insect adhesion and to improve the easy cleaning of insects once they impact on the aircraft fuselage. Within the project STELLAR, CIDETEC aims to develop new low adhesion coatings taking into account technical skills such as omniphobicity and high slippery surfaces and based on key parameters obtained from the physical studies of surfaces and their interaction with the insect hemolymph.
TECHNOLOGY
Omniphobic coatings with high slippery properties will diminish their surface interaction with any top material, including insect hemolymph. The phobic contact angles versus hemolymph will indicate how low the affinity of these surfaces against hemolymph is, and the slippery properties measured in terms of tilting angle will give us some indication about the degree of self-cleaning of the developed surfaces.
TECHNICAL ADVANTAGES
The developed omniphobic coatings in STELLAR project pursue low adhesion coatings towards hemolymoph with easy cleaning properties. These concepts contrast with the classical performance of hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces already investigated in the State of the Art. It is known that hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces show their best performance when tested against polar liquids such as water; hence, there is room to improve their performance by means of new omniphobic coatings.
INPUT IN STELLAR
In order to meet the STELLAR goals, the biochemistry of the hemolymph and its evolution when exposed at simulated flight conditions (WP3), together with key surface parameters obtained from WP4 will be used in the development of new omniphobic coatings with high slippery properties. These inputs will be essential in order to optimise the results from WP5, where these coatings are being developed.