Predicting the formation of ice on aircraft

Ice accretion can affect aircraft safety. By understanding how and where ice will form on an aircraft, scientists can design better ways to prevent icing and optimize de-icing.

Chen et al. developed a 3D numerical model to predict ice formation on aircraft. The model assumes ice accretion is caused by water droplets forming a thin water film on the surface of an aircraft, which then freezes.

Unlike structured icing models, which are not ideal for real-world flight simulations, the authors based their model on an unstructured mesh by using a prism grid cell. Because of this design, the model can be applied to complex geometries.

The model considers the effects of air shear stress, pressure gradient, gravity and surface tension. It was developed by analyzing the conservations of mass, momentum and energy of the thin water film.

“By using this model, we can learn where ice will accrete and how much ice will accumulate on the aircraft. This has great importance in design for anti-icing,” said author Ningli Chen.

The authors verified their model on a NACA0012 airfoil using three different icing conditions.

In the future, the authors intend on applying their model to anti-icing simulations on full-scale aircraft by adjusting the boundary conditions of the energy equations and developing the solution scheme for the wall temperature.

Source: “A mathematical model based on unstructured mesh for ice accretion,” by Ningli Chen, Yaping Hu, Honghu Ji, Guangzhou Cao, and Yongqing Yuan, AIP Advances (2019). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5127235 .