Computational and Experimental Investigation of Ice Particle Accretion in a Generic Pack Discharge Duct

Certain operating modes of the Environmental Control System (ECS) of passenger aircraft are accompanied with significant ice particle accretion in a number of pivotal parts of the system. Icing conditions particularly prevail downstream of the air conditioning packs and, as a consequence, ice particle accretion takes place in the Pack Discharge Duct (PDD) and in the mixing manifold. For a better understanding of these icing processes, numerical simulations using a multiphase model based on a coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian transport model in a generic PDD were performed. The obstruction of the PDD due to ice growth and the resulting change of the flow geometry were treated by deforming the computational mesh during the CFD simulations. In addition to the numerical investigations, a generic and transparent PDD was studied experimentally under several operating conditions in FH JOANNEUM's icing wind tunnel.