Investigation of Water Impingement on Aero-Components by Lagrangian and Eulerian Approach

Icing related problems on aero-components have been recognized since the beginning of modern aviation. Various icing incidents occurred due to severe degradation of aerodynamic performance, and engine rollbacks. As in-flight icing can occur over a broad range of atmospheric and flight conditions, design of effective ice protection mechanisms on aero-components is essential. Computational simulations are a significant part of designing these mechanisms, therefore accurate prediction of droplet collection efficiency and accreted ice shapes are vital. In the current study, continued efforts to improve a computational in-flight icing prediction tool are introduced together with obtained results. The emphasis in this study is on the recent improvements introduced to flow-field and droplet trajectory calculation modules. The flow-field predictions were previously managed by Hess-Smith panel method and this module is fortified with inclusion of an open-source Navier-Stokes code. Droplet trajectories were being computed with Lagrangian method and now a finite volume based Eulerian droplet trajectory tracking model with explicit scheme is also available. In order to evaluate the performance of these major updates, code validation results are presented on various aero-components including a clean MS(1)-0317 supercritical airfoil, a clean NACA23012 airfoil along with 3 simulated ice shapes mounted on, a multi-element airfoil, an axisymmetric engine inlet and an inertial particle separator. Results obtained by Eulerian model are compared with experimental data from open literature and existing Lagrangian method findings when applicable. Present study and the results show that developed approach has potential in terms of computational time, accuracy and suitability for complex aero-component analysis.