Computational Fluid Dynamics Investigation of Transient Effects of Aircraft Ground Deicing Jets

Abstract

The present Paper investigates the heat transfer and momentum created by a hot turbulent propylene glycol jet impinging on a horizontal plate at below the freezing-point temperature. A model for the simulation of the initial formation of liquid film at the beginning of an aircraft ground deicing process is proposed. The volume of fluid model coupled with the film formulation is employed using computational fluid dynamics to capture the interface in multiphase flow (liquid propylene glycol/liquid water/air). The three-dimensional Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes equations are numerically solved using a finite volume discretization under unsteady conditions. The ground deicing case consists of a box and a convergent divergent nozzle installed inside the box. Approximately 512,000 rectangular cells with 0.006 m of thickness are used to refine the mesh of the liquid film on the wall. Flow conditions set are 60°C for the propylene glycol inlet temperature and 0°C for the static ambient temperature. The computed impinged surface skin Nusselt number gives the most noticeable discrepancies at the stagnation point, where the analysis results in a lower skin Nusselt number compared to the experimental results. The magnitudes of heat transfer for the ground deicing case study are found to be in good agreement with experimental hot jet data obtained from the literature.