Application of FENSAP-ICE-Unsteady to Helicopter Icing

The applicability of FENSAP-ICE-Unsteady to solve ice accretion on rotating helicopter blades is investigated using a two-bladed rotor and a generic cylinder, to represent a fuselage, for a forward flight test case. The unsteady rime ice accretion is simulated by coupling, at each time step, flow and water drop equations to the Messinger icing model. Mesh displacement effects are taken into account by an Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian method. This new icing model is applied to rotor/fuselage flows by considering two grid domains: the first being fixed around the fuselage, and the second rotating with the blades. The gap region is stitched with tetrahedral elements to fully guarantee flow conservation.