Numerical simulation of three-dimensional rotor icing in hovering flight

Abstract

Rotor icing is a serious threat to helicopter flight safety and computational fluid dynamics technology is very useful in icing prediction. In this work, a numerical simulation method is presented to calculate three-dimensional rotor icing in hovering flight. The rotor flow fields are obtained using overlapping grids. According to Euler two-phase flow, the droplet trajectories and impingement characteristics are predicted. On the basis of three-dimensional ice accretion model, a new runback water distribution method based on shear force and centrifugal force is proposed to simulate liquid water flow and ice shape. The calculation results are compared with the experimental results under different conditions in order to verify the correctness of the method. Furthermore, the effects of blades rotation on the liquid water content distribution and droplet impingement characteristics are studied, and the effect of centrifugal force on ice shape is analyzed. The results show that the blade will influence others with the blade tip Mach number increasing, and centrifugal force will cause the ice thickness increases on leading edge and decreases at both frozen limitations.