Eulerian Method for Ice Accretion on Multiple-Element Airfoil Sections

Abstract

A computational method is presented that given the flow solution computes ice accretion on multiple-element airfoils in specified icing conditions. The numerical simulation method (Droplerian) uses an Eulerian method to determine the droplet trajectories and distribution of the Liquid Water Content (LWC). To solve the equations for the droplet trajectories and liquid water content distribution, Droplerian uses a Finite Volume Method for unstructured grids. Through the droplet velocities and Liquid Water Content at the surface of the airfoil configuration the droplet catching e ciency is calculated. The droplet catching e ciency and droplet velocities at the airfoil surface are input for the icing model, which is based on Messinger’s model for ice accretion. The method includes a multi-disperse droplet distribution with an arbitrary number of droplet bins and a droplet splashing model. For a single-element airfoil a good agreement is found with measured catching efficiencies and with the ice shapes predicted by other computational methods. For increasing droplet diameter the agreement with experimental results deteriorates. The application of the method to a three-element airfoil is described. The comparison of the catching e ciency predicted by both the Droplerian method and a Lagrangian method (2DFOIL-ICE) is good. The agreement of predicted ice accretions with available experimental data is reasonable.