A comparison study of a novel method of utilizing thermal effects induced by Dielectric-Barrier Discharge (DBD) plasma actuation (i.e., DBD plasma-based method) and a conventional electrical heating method for aircraft icing mitigation was performed in an Icing Research Tunnel available at Iowa State University (i.e., ISU-IRT). A NACA0012 airfoil/wing model embedded with an AC-DBD plasma actuator and a conventional electrical film heater over the airfoil surface was tested under a typical aircraft icing condition. While a high-speed imaging system was used to record the dynamic ice accretion and transient surface water transport processes over the airfoil surface, an infrared (IR) thermal imaging system was also utilized to map the corresponding surface temperature distributions over the airfoil surface simultaneously to quantify the unsteady heat transfer and phase changing process over the ice accreting airfoil surface. It was found that, with the same power input, the DBD plasma-based method showed at least equivalent effectiveness, if not better, in preventing ice accretion over the airfoil surface, in comparison to the conventional electrical heating method. Further optimization of the DBD plasma-based method with a duty-cycle modulation was found to have a much better anti-/de-icing performance, in comparison to the conventional electrical heating method. The findings derived from the present study demonstrated the potential of a new class of anti-/de-icing strategy by leveraging the thermal effects induced by DBD plasma actuation for aircraft in-flight icing mitigation. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.