Ice Roughness and Thickness Evolution on a Business Jet Airfoil

Abstract

Experiments were performed in the Icing Research Tunnel at NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) to investigate the ice roughness and thickness evolution on a 152.4-cm (60-in.) chord business jet airfoil exposed to both Appendix C and Appendix O (SLD - Super-cooled Large Droplet) icing conditions. The resulting measurements demonstrate that the average non-dimensional roughness and the stagnation point thickness scalings are similar to those demonstrated on symmetric wings. However, the surface variations of roughness and thickness exhibit significant differences from those observed on symmetric airfoils. The source of the roughness and thickness differences is the result of surface pressure, velocity and temperature distribution differences from the suction to the pressure sides of the airfoil. LEWICE (LEWis ICE accretion program - software developed at NASA Lewis Research Center - former name of the GRC) simulations are used to further investigate the influences of local collection efficiency and the local freezing fraction on the resulting ice roughness and thickness spatial variations.