Analysis of Runback Water Flow on Anti-Icing Surface Using Volume-of-Fluid Method

Abstract

The runback water flow and heat transfer on the surface of aircraft components has an important influence on the design of anti-icing system. The aim of this paper is to investigate the water flow characteristics on anti-icing surface using numerical method. The runback water flow on the anti-icing surface, which is caused by the impinging supercooled droplets from the clouds, is driven by the aerodynamic shear forces and the pressure gradient around the components. This is a complex model of flow and heat transfer that considers flow field, super-cooled droplets impingement and runback water flow simultaneously. In this case of gas-liquid two phase flow, the Volume-of-Fluid (VOF) method is very suitable for the solution of thin liquid film flow so that it is applied to simulate the runback water flow on anti-icing surfaces in this paper. Meanwhile, the heat and mass transfer of the runback water flow are considered in the calculation using the User-Defined Functions (UDFs) in ANASYS FLUENT. The verification is conducted by the comparison with the results of the experimental measurement and the mathematical model calculation. The effect of the airflow velocity and contact angle on the water flow are also considered in the numerical simulation.