Browse Topic: Icing and ice detection
In response to the current airworthiness regulations’ inability to cover the stall flight test requirements under icing conditions of civil aircraft with high-angle-of-attack restriction function and the lack of relevant flight test technologies in China, a study was conducted on the differences in airworthiness provisions for stall characteristics under icing conditions of such aircraft. Key technologies, including simulated ice accretion stall flight test methods, ice installation strategies, and data analysis techniques, are proposed and successfully applied to a specific civil aircraft. The results demonstrate that the methodologies proposed in this paper can effectively support simulated ice accretion stall tests, providing valuable insights for other similar aircraft.
This paper evaluates the feasibility of Restricted Icing operations for light to medium helicopters, which typically lack Full Ice Protection Systems (FIPS). Current regulations normally prohibit these aircraft from flying in known icing conditions, leading to frequent mission cancellations for HEMS and SAR operators. To address this, Airbus conducted flight test campaigns in Norway (2023, 2025) to characterize a safe icing envelope for "cold blade" operations. Results demonstrate that the H145 was able to sustain continuous flight in icing conditions between 0°C and -3°C and perform time-limited operations (5–10 minutes) down to -6°C without compromising safety, handling, or structural integrity. Safe Restricted Icing operations require an operational framework that ensures proper planning, safe routing, briefing, in-flight decision making, and specialized crew training. The study concludes that a Restricted Icing Clearance could significantly enhance winter flight safety. By providing an IFR alternative to VFR flights in marginal weather within a clear operational framework, the introduction of a Restricted Icing Clearance could ensure the availability of critical life-saving missions in typical winter weather.
A new Adverse Environment Rotor Test Stand (AERTS II) facility was designed and constructed to investigate rotor blade icing phenomena and evaluate ice protection technologies under controlled rotating-frame conditions. The facility consists of a 350 hp (261 kW) direct-drive rotor and spray system in a walk-in freezer capable of producing controlled FAR Appendix C and Appendix O icing clouds for rotor diameters up to 22 ft (6.7 m). This work presents the facility configuration, calibration approach, and initial icing results. A liquid water content (LWC) calibration methodology based on rime ice accretion thickness was implemented to determine experimental LWC and establish repeatable operating procedures. Ice shapes from a NACA 0012 paddle blade were compared against LEWICE-based predictions, repeatability cases, and published reference wind tunnel ice shapes. Repeatability testing showed good agreement between runs, particularly in colder icing regimes, with maximum variations of 15.75% in cross-sectional ice area, 1.33% in impingement limits, and 15.12% in stagnation thickness. These results demonstrate AERTS II's ability to reproduce representative rotor icing conditions in a controlled indoor environment. The facility also demonstrated support for wirelessly controlled rotating-frame electro-thermal heater experiments, establishing AERTS II as a novel platform for rotor icing physics investigations and rotorcraft ice protection system evaluation.
This study investigates the phenomenon of receptacle icing during Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) refueling at filling stations, attributing the issue to excessive moisture content in the gas. The research examines the underlying causes, including the Joule-Thomson effect, filter geometries, and their collective impact on flow interruptions. A comprehensive test methodology is proposed to simulate real-world conditions, evaluating various filter types, seal materials and moisture levels to understand their influence on icing and flow cessation. The findings aim to offer ideas for reducing icing problems. This will improve the reliability and safety of CNG refueling systems.
Civil and military rotorcraft operators desire enhanced capabilities from their vehicles in terms of mission efficiency, effectiveness, productivity, and availability. A critical element of this challenge is associated with providing cold weather availability. Currently, cold weather operations are enabled by regulatory actions leading to Limited Approvals, Qualifications, Clearances, and Restrictions. Cold weather certification (clearance of a new aircraft) and continuing airworthiness (maintaining effectiveness of fielded aircraft) are data driven processes. This work provides guidance on an Icing Encounters Survey (IES) based data gathering method supporting continuing airworthiness organizations in improving fleet safety and capabilities during cold weather operations.
The paper presents recent and ongoing activities of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) focusing on experimental icing investigations within the nationally funded project InTEnt-H (2018-2022) and progressive activities in continuing internal DLR projects. The aim of InTEnt-H was to investigate innovative de-icing and anti-icing technologies for small and medium-weight helicopters, for which no rotor de-icing technologies exist to date, and to demonstrate the effectiveness of these systems in a suitable test facility. For this purpose, the whirl tower test facility of the DLR in Braunschweig has been converted into an icing test facility that is unique in Europe and will allow for the generation of atmospheric icing conditions. In this facility, de-icing and anti-icing systems for rotor blades can be tested under centrifugal loads and various icing conditions. The paper starts with a short presentation of the retrofitting works at the DLR whirl tower test facility and its major components. Then, the progress of the first test campaigns of the projects are reported. The main focus is on the design and test of the de-icing rotor system, carrying different antiicing/ de-icing technologies. The paper closes with an outlook on the upcoming activities planned to satisfy and verify EASA CS-29 Appendix C icing conditions in the frame of the DLR internal project SAFER2.
Ice build-up on aircraft and wind turbines can impact the safety and efficiency of their systems.
Historically, smaller Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), such as Class 2 RQ-1B Raven and Class 3 RQ-7Bv2 Shadow, have been restricted to not be approved to fly in icing conditions under the assumption that any ice accretion would cause an unacceptable risk of loss of the aircraft. However, interest exists in better understanding potential icing accretion on UAS to determine if less extreme icing conditions could result in only partial degradation and not total loss of the vehicle for the purpose of expanding approved flight envelopes. Icing accretion can be tested during a flight test, which is considered unacceptable due to lack of controlled conditions and risk to the UAS or in a controlled experiment, by using wind tunnel testing to evaluate a single icing condition. Cryogenic wind tunnel tests, such as those conducted at the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) Glenn Icing Research Tunnel (IRT), Cleveland, OH, as shown in figures 1 and 2, are prohibitively expensive and time consuming to evaluate a wide array of icing conditions on multiple UAS. The ability to simulate aircraft icing using computational methods permits evaluation across a number of vehicles and icing scenarios for a fraction of the cost and time.
Ice prediction capabilities for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) is of growing interest as UAS designs and applications become more diverse. This report summarizes the current state-of-the-art in modeling aircraft icing within a computational framework as well as a recent U.S. Army DEVCOM AvMC effort to evaluate ice prediction models for current use and future integration into the Computational Research and Engineering Acquisition Tools and Environments (CREATE) Air Vehicle (AV) framework. U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama Historically, smaller Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), such as Class 2 RQ-1B Raven and Class 3 RQ-7Bv2 Shadow, have been restricted to not be approved to fly in icing conditions under the assumption that any ice accretion would cause an unacceptable risk of loss of the aircraft. However, interest exists in better understanding potential icing accretion on UAS to determine if less extreme icing conditions could result in only partial degradation and not total loss of the vehicle for the purpose of expanding approved flight envelopes. Icing accretion can be tested during a flight test, which is considered unacceptable due to lack of controlled conditions and risk to the UAS or in a controlled experiment, by using wind tunnel testing to evaluate a single icing condition. Cryogenic wind tunnel tests, such as those conducted at the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) Glenn Icing Research Tunnel (IRT), Cleveland, OH, as shown in figures 1 and 2, are prohibitively expensive and time consuming to evaluate a wide array of icing conditions on multiple UAS. The ability to simulate aircraft icing using computational methods permits evaluation across a number of vehicles and icing scenarios for a fraction of the cost and time. The aerospace scientific community has recently developed interest in ice prediction capabilities within a computational framework. In 2021, the first American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Ice Prediction Workshop was held in conjunction with the AIAA Aviation Forum [2]. Twenty participants from academia, industry, and government evaluated ice accretion on Two-Dimensional (2-D) and Three-Dimensional (3-D) geometries where experimental ice shapes were publicly available by using a wide range of solvers to assess the state-of-the-art in icing prediction tools. Kestrel and Helios, the Computational Research and Engineering Acquisition Tools and Environments (CREATE) Air Vehicle (AV) simulation tools for fixed-wing and rotorcraft evaluation, do not have ice prediction capabilities.
Brake squeal is a common phenomenon across all types of vehicles. It becomes prominent in the absence of other noise sources, as in the case of electric vehicles. Earlier simulation attempts date back to late nineties and early 2000s. Identification of unstable modes of the coupled system of brake rotor and pads, and occasionally some caliper components, was the primary goal. Simulating the rotation of the rotor along with squeezing of the pads was attempted in a multi-body dynamics tools with flexible representation of rotor and pads. Though this gave some insights into the dynamics of stopping mechanism, squeal required capturing the nonlinearities of the contact in a more rigorous sense. Also, efforts were made to capture noise from vibrations using boundary- and finite- element methods [1]. In this attempt at digitalizing a brake dynamometer, the author used a nonlinear implicit solver to mimic the dynamics and transient vibro-acoustic solver to convert transient vibrations to transient squeal spectra. An icing on the cake is the auralization of the squeal event that generates the audio file which can be later re-played. To capture the stochastic nature of brake event in a more computationally efficient way, the author proposes a linear approximation and synthesizes multiple squeal events from a single nonlinear solution.
Super-cooled large drops present serious threats to aviation safety and as a result, the problem has been addressed by the FAA with the additional icing certification requirement. SLD clouds often consist of bi-modal drop size spectra leading to great challenges when it comes to simulating and characterizing these conditions in situ and in icing wind tunnels. Legacy instrumentation for measuring drop size distributions and liquid water content has been challenged under these conditions. In this report, a high-resolution particle imaging instrument is described; this instrument addresses the need for measuring drop size distributions and liquid water content over a wide range of drop sizes (10 to 2500 μm or larger). A high-throughput megapixel digital camera is used to record shadow images of the particles. High-quality illumination of the particle field is provided with high-power LED illumination with driving electronics designed to provide pulse durations as short as 25ns with sufficient fluence. Image processing software has been developed to enable automated setup of the instrument, image acquisition and processing, and efficient storage of the particle images. Calibration methods regarding the dependence of the depth-of-field to drop size were developed to enable sampling statistics bias corrections due to variations in the sample volume. Measurements acquired in the NASA Icing Research Tunnel (IRT) are provided as an example of the measurement capabilities of the newly developed instruments.
To support an industry wide response to an EASA proposed Special Condition regarding the threat of in-flight supercooled liquid water icing conditions at altitudes above FL300, Boeing 777 fleet data were used to estimate the frequency and severity of such icing occurrences. The data were from the calendar year 2019 and included ~ 950,000 airline revenue flights from around the world by multiple operators. The unique architecture of the Primary Ice Detection System (PIDS) on that model, in addition to robust meteorological data that was able to be correlated, afforded an opportunity to conservatively estimate the Total Water Exposure (TWE) and thus the Liquid Water Content (LWC) of the icing encounters captured at FL295 and above. This paper will outline the key methods used and present the findings.
The Current Icing Product (CIP; Bernstein et al. 2005) and Forecast Icing Product (FIP; Wolff et al. 2009) were originally developed by the United States’ National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) under sponsorship of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the mid 2000’s and provide operational icing guidance to users through the NOAA Aviation Weather Center (AWC). The current operational version of FIP uses the Rapid Refresh (RAP; Benjamin et al. 2016) numerical weather prediction (NWP) model to provide hourly forecasts of Icing Probability, Icing Severity, and Supercooled Large Drop (SLD) Potential. Forecasts are provided out to 18 hours over the Contiguous United States (CONUS) at 15 flight levels between 1,000 ft and FL290, inclusive, and at a 13-km horizontal resolution. CIP provides similar hourly output on the same grid, but utilizes geostationary satellite data, ground-based radar data, Meteorological Terminal Air Reports (METARS), lightning data, and voice pilot reports (PIREPs) in addition to the RAP model output to provide near-realtime icing guidance. This paper presents recent enhancements to the prototype versions of CIP and FIP (CIP v2.0 and FIP v2.0, respectively). The enhancements described are intended to take better advantage of enhanced model resolution and microphysics parameterization as well as state-of-the-art observations for icing diagnosis and forecasting.
In this work, ice accretion is investigated on a fundamental level using a novel Eulerian phase field approach that captures the phase interface. This method, unlike the Allen-Cahn method, does not lead to spurious phase change (artificial mass loss). This method is also straightforward to implement and avoids normal vector reconstructions along the interface or ghost cells. Additionally, it has well-defined and novel stiffness constraints for accuracy and stability that define parameters in the model such as the kinetic coefficient μ and the interface regularization coefficient γ. An incompressible solver is constructed and used to verify the new method using an analytical Stefan problem solution in both 1D and 2D domains.
The term “3 inch ice shapes” has assumed numerous definitions throughout the years. At times it has been used to generally characterize large glaze ice accretions on the major aerodynamic surfaces (wing, horizontal stabilizer, vertical stabilizer) for evaluating aerodynamic performance and handling qualities after a prolonged icing encounter. It has also been used as a more direct criterion while determining or enforcing sectional ice shape characteristics such as the maximum pinnacle height. It is the authors’ observation that over the years, the interpretation and application of this term has evolved and is now broadly misunderstood. Compounding the situation is, at present, a seemingly contradictory set of guidance among (and even within) the various international regulatory agencies resulting in an ambiguous set of expectations for design and certification specialists. The focus of this paper is to provide a more complete and accurate historical accounting of “3 inch ice shapes” which is currently only speculative and incomplete within the public purview. It is the authors’ intent to provide a better collective understanding and appreciation for how the industry arrived at this current state.
The European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme has funded the SENS4ICE (Sensors for Certifiable Hybrid Architectures for Safer Aviation in Icing Environment) international collaboration flagship programme. Under this programme a number of different organizations have developed ice detection technologies, specifically aimed at providing information to differentiate between ‘classical’ Appendix C icing conditions and the larger droplets found in Appendix O icing. As a partner within the SENS4ICE project, AeroTex UK has developed an ice detection concept called the Atmospheric Icing Patch (AIP). The sensor utilizes a network of iso-thermal sensors to detect icing and differentiate between small and large droplet icing conditions. This paper discusses the development of the sensor technology with a focus on the outcomes of the flight testing performed on the Embraer Phenom 300 platform during early 2023. The work in the programme is built on previous studies performed by AeroTex UK into a probe-based sensor that operates using the same approach. The patch approach was finally adopted as it minimizes heat losses and therefore draws significantly less power than the equivalent probe system. It is better suited to the detection and differentiation of small and large droplet conditions through the application of an array of patches. The aircraft plays a key role in the sensor function as the fuselage is used to inertially separate the droplets allowing some patches to be located where only large droplets would impinge whilst others are in locations where droplets of all sizes impinge. The fuselage installation means that variability in sensor response with angle-of-attack and sideslip is negligible compared to a lifting surface installation. The testing conducted by Embraer on the Phenom 300 successfully demonstrated the system capabilities through the detection of icing conditions and differentiation between small and large droplet distributions. The sensor system also demonstrated the ability to estimate the Liquid Water Content (LWC), but further work is required to improve this correlation.
This paper presents a novel fully-automatic remeshing procedure, based on the level-set method and Delaunay triangulation, to model three-dimensional boundary problems and generate a new conformal body-fitted mesh. The proposed methodology is applied to long-term in-flight ice accretion, which is characterized by the formation of extremely irregular ice shapes. Since ice accretion is coupled with the aerodynamic flow field, a multi-step procedure is implemented. The total icing exposure time is subdivided into smaller time steps, and at each time step a three-dimensional body-fitted mesh, suitable for the computation of the aerodynamic flow field around the updated geometry, is generated automatically. The methodology proposed can effectively deal with front intersections, as shown with a manufactured example. Numerical simulations over a NACA0012 swept wing both in rime and glaze conditions are compared with the experimentally measured ice shapes from the 1st AIAA Ice Prediction Workshop.
The paper describes a tools’ suite able of analyzing numerically 3D ice-accretion problems of aeronautical interest. The methodology consists of linking different modules each of them performing a specific function inside the ice-simulation chain. It has been specifically designed from the beginning with multi-step capability in mind. Such a feature plays a key role when studying the dynamic evolution of the icing process. Indeed, the latter has the character of a multi-physic and time-dependent phenomenon which foresees a strong interaction of the air- and water fields with the wall thermodynamics. Our multi-layer approach assumes that the physical problem can be discretized by a series of pseudo-steady conditions. The simulation process starts with the automatic generation of a Cartesian three-dimensional mesh which represents the input for the immersed boundary (IB) RANS solver. Once obtained, the air-phase is used by the Eulerian tool to solve the transport of the water-phase on the same domain-grid. Both the volumetric solvers share the same unstructured data management and the finite-volume (FV) approach which is based on locally refined Cartesian meshes. Part of the research effort is devoted to the development of a thermodynamic 3D method which solves the surface liquid-film by Messinger balances of mass and energy. The main outputs are the equilibrium temperature and the mass of ice. The latter is used to compute the local ice-height for accretion purposes. A Lagrangian modification of the geometry is applied at each step by moving the wall vertices along the local unit normal vector. The modified 3D surface is passed again to the automatic mesher for renewing the computational loop. The accuracy and the limits of the present method are discussed by analyzing the results on three-dimensional benchmarks proposed in the framework of the 1st ice prediction workshop (IPW).
The numerical simulation of ice accretion on aircraft is a complex problem that is difficult to simulate robustly, especially in 3D. The process, which combines multiple different solvers, is prone to fail whenever the geometry deformation due to ice is too complex. Thus, the more ice layers, the more fragile is the simulation. This paper aims at studying, and possibly reducing, the dependency on the number of layers by considering i) the impact of the deforming surface on the impingement and ii) a local roughness modeling that can better position the ice horns. The method called Impact Angle Correction (IAC) method in the literature is implemented and consists in setting in an additional loop the components solved on the surface, namely the thermodynamic exchanges and the geometry update, to consider the change in the surface normal vectors. For each of these ice sub-layers, the impingement water mass is recomputed by considering all droplet bins after each deformation of the surface. Two-dimensional results show that this method can reduce the dependency on the number of full ice layers. A local roughness model is also implemented to impact the convective heat transfer simulation on the surface depending on local icing data. This local roughness could allow to better capture the ice horn locations, angle and height. Two-dimensional results presented in this work show in particular that lower horns are better captured when using a local roughness model. Three-dimensional glaze results show the effect of the coupling of both models for single-layer ice accretion, which can help capturing small-scale ice features.
Items per page:
50
1 – 50 of 886