Numerical simulation of rime ice accretion on airfoil using rigid sphere model

Abstract

A 2D/3D numerical model for rime ice shape prediction is developed by combining the rigid sphere model (RSM) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and its characteristics are investigated. In the RSM, the ice accretion is modeled based on first principles with little physical modeling. The ice particle on an airfoil is described as a rigid sphere, and the ice shape is represented as a collection of rigid spheres. We use a non-body-fitted hierarchical Cartesian grid-based CFD solver so that complex ice shape represented by RSM can be handled. The tree data of the hierarchical Cartesian grid is also used for fast search of droplet positions. In addition, multiple ice particles are modeled as one large particle to reduce the number of trajectory calculations. The sensitivity of several parameters in the calculation is studied in 2D. Subsequently, 3D ice accretion analysis on NACA0012 airfoil using the RSM is performed for the first time. The simulation results are compared with those of the wind-tunnel experiments conducted at NASA. Although the RSM is a simple ice accretion model, reliable results are obtained in both 2D and 3D calculations.