Project HaSU

HaSU is a development project founded within Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking, the largest ever European aeronautics research programme. The scope of the HaSU project is to develop a hydrophobic coating for the Next Generation Tilt Rotor (NGCTR). Aircraft windshields must keep pilots’ visibility at excellent levels under several operating conditions, particularly under heavy rain occurring during flight. To this purpose, the majority of modern commercial aircrafts use wipers to shed water from the windshields. Use of wipers is no longer foreseen in some future civil aircrafts such as the Next Generation Civil Tilt Rotor (NGCTR). A durable, surface coating on the windshield to shed water would be an ideal solution to maintain visibility without using wipers and will be of fundamental importance to limit the formation of rain-induced ice on windscreen. Today’s commercially available rain repellent treatments have poor durability and weather resistance, and they cannot be applied to polymeric transparent substrates, such as aircraft canopies. In fact, liquid treatments rubbed onto the surface of the windshield must be applied periodically or as needed as their performance degrades rapidly over time. The HaSU project, funded by the European Commission under the CleanSky2 platform, is about the development and industrialization of a rain repellent substrate capable of forming highly durable hydrophobic coatings for windshields based on a particulate inorganic homogenously distributed throughout a polymeric matrix with the aim to provide a permanent treatment that will last the life of the windshield.