Abstract
Most icing research focuses on the high Reynolds number regime and manned aviation. Information on icing at low Reynolds numbers, as it is encountered by wind turbines and unmanned aerial vehicles, is less available, and few experimental datasets exist that can be used for validation of numerical tools. This study investigated the aerodynamic performance degradation on an S826 airfoil with 3D-printed ice shapes at Reynolds numbers Re = 2 × 105, 4 × 105, and 6 × 105. Three ice geometries were obtained from icing wind tunnel experiments, and an additional three geometries were generated with LEWICE. Experimental measurements of lift, drag, and pressure on the clean and iced airfoils have been conducted in the low-speed wind tunnel at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The results showed that the icing performance penalty correlated to the complexity of the ice geometry. The experimental data were compared to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations with the RANS solver FENSAP. Simulations were performed with two turbulence models (Spalart Allmaras and Menter’s k-ω SST). The simulation data showed good fidelity for the clean and streamlined icing cases but had limitations for complex ice shapes and stall.
Highlights
Atmospheric icing occurs when supercooled liquid droplets collide with a structure—for example, an aircraft or a wind turbine—and freeze
The experimental data of this work are shared as Supplementary Materials and are suitable to be used for the validation of other numerical tools for the prediction of icing penalties at low Reynolds numbers
The experimental results showed that the overall degree of performance penalties being due to icing is correlated with the geometry of the ice shapes
Summary
Atmospheric icing occurs when supercooled liquid droplets collide with a structure—for example, an aircraft or a wind turbine—and freeze. Such meteorological conditions can be found in clouds or during freezing precipitation events. The resulting ice accretions are responsible for significant aerodynamic performance penalties [1]. The topic of atmospheric in-flight icing has been primarily studied on manned aircraft since the 1940s and 1950s [2]. Most of this research has been performed at high Reynolds numbers, which in aviation are typically the order of Re = 107 –108 (e.g., [1,4,5])
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