An experimental study on dynamic ice accretion process over the surfaces of rotating aero-engine spinners

Abstract

An experimental study was conducted to investigate the dynamic ice accretion process over the surfaces of rotating aero-engine spinners and to examine the detriment effects of the ice accretion on the airflow to be inhaled by aero-engines. Three scaled spinner-fan models with different spinner shapes (i.e., conical-shaped, coniptical-shaped, and elliptical-shaped spinners) were manufactured and exposed under typical rime and glaze icing conditions for a comparative study. During the experiments, while a high-speed imaging system was used to record the dynamic ice accretion process over the rotating spinner models, a high-resolution particle image velocimetry (PIV) system was utilized to examine the trajectories of super-cooled water droplets as they approach to the surfaces of the spinner models. It was found that, under typical rime conditions, while accreted ice layers were found to conform well with the original shapes of the spinner models in general, the total amount of the ice mass accreted over the spinner surfaces were found to be a strong dependent on the spinner shapes. While the conical-shaped spinner was found to have the largest amount of ice accretion (i.e., 60–80% more than those over the other two spinner models) over almost entire spinner surface, ice accretion was found to take place mainly in the front portion of the coniptical-shaped and elliptical-shaped spinners. Under the glaze icing condition, in addition to forming ice layers over the spinner surfaces, very complicated, needle-shaped icicles were also found to grow rapidly out from the spinner surfaces and extrude into the incoming airflow, due to the effects of the centrifugal forces associated with the rotation motion. The complex glaze ice structures accreted over the spinner surface were found to induce significant disturbances/distortions and even cause large-scale flow separations for the airflow near the iced spinner surfaces, which would significantly degrade the quality of the inlet airflow to be inhaled by aero-engines, thereby, adversely affecting the performance of aero-engines.