Search Method for Extended Target in Icing Research of Aircraft

Abstract

Ice formation on aircraft is a great safety concern that can quickly lead to a dangerous situation. A correct estimation is a pre-requisite to design an effective anti- and de-icing system. During the past years, the Lagrangian approach has been largely used by most of the researchers to numerically estimate the water collection efficiency and its extension on the aircraft surfaces, it is based on the computation of a discrete set of water trajectories impinging on the body. The method often provides good result compared with the experiment data but some shortcomings have surfaced from the application of this approach on more peculiar geometry, such as multi-element airfoils and 3-D test cases, especially when calculating the impingement limits. At this aim, an improved Lagrangian method was developed based on a method for searching extended target. This method has overcome the shortages of traditional Lagrangian method, such as low computation efficiency and it is short of currency in peculiar geometry. But, it has also maintained the robustness of original method, without the issue of convergence in Euler method. Local droplet collection and local impingement efficiency at NACA0012 and multi-element airfoils are simulated with this method in order to verify its correctness. The calculated results show that, this improved method contributes to reduce the calculation efforts, and the water collection efficiency we got was consistent with the experimental result.