Aerospace & Defense

Challenge

The customer required a pitot-tube heater that could prevent icing at altitude with consistent, reliable heat output despite the pitot assembly's sharply constrained heater footprint. The heater needed to:

• Fit inside a 0.25 in. diameter envelope while maintaining structural integrity
• Deliver very high watt density to prevent ice formation at altitude
• Reduce overall length from 4 in. to 1.75 in. across successive revisions
• Support multiple heating elements in both the probe and base assembly
• Operate reliable in freezing, wet, rapidly changing atmospheric conditions
• Meet a clear safety threshold: loss of pitot heat = loss of air-data = loss of flight-control inputs

Most heater suppliers were unwilling or unable to produce prototypes at this power density and size. The project required a partner who could solve a highly constrained thermal-engineering problem on a compressed prototype schedule.

Solution

Dalton's Watt-Flex® engineering team collaborated closely with the aircraft manufacturer through multiple rapid design cycles to achieve the necessary watt density within an aggressively reduced footprint.

Dalton engineered:

• An ultra-compact heater geometry optimized for maximum watt density
• Heater lengths reduced to 1.75 in. while maintaining required output
• Stable, uniform heat transfer essential for fast de-icing
• Dedicated variants for both the probe and base assembly
• Fast iteration speed aligned to evolving prototype timelines

Dalton's proprietary compaction and roll-forming process packs more resistance material into the available volume and improves heat transfer to the sheath. The result is higher heat per cubic inch than conventional cartridge heaters, enabling the required watt density in a quarter-inch diameter pitot assembly.

The heaters have been integrated into the manufacturer's active flight-test prototypes and are performing as required for safety-critical pitot de-icing.

Results

With Dalton's ultra-compact Watt-Flex® heaters in place, the customer achieved de-icing performance suitable for safety-critical air-data systems:

• Proven performance in flight-test demonstrator aircraft
• Higher watt density than comparable heaters of similar diameter
• Fast, reliable de-icing to protect pitot-tube air-data accuracy
• >50% reduction in heater size with no loss of wattage
• Direct support to a subsystem responsible for:
  • autopilot
  • stall-protection logic
  • altitude and airspeed management
  • flight-control stability

This air-data subsystem is mission-critical and safety-critical. Dalton's heating solution is now integrated into one of the aircraft's most essential sensing components, providing the thermal reliability required for continued prototype flight testing and platform advancement.