Aircraft Icing

_{Funded by NASA Glenn}

Ice accrued on wings will greatly reduced lift, and ice accretion and its subsequent breakup in engines could cause engine failure or roll out. Thus, aircraft icing is a serious safety issue.

Contributions made include:

1. Developed an algorithm and code to generate high-quality single and multi-block structured grids for rime and glaze ice shapes with highly complicated surface geometries including horns and feathers, which enabled CFD studies of turbulence models because now solutions will converge. The grid- generation algorithm developed is the basis of NASA’s SmaggICE code.
2. Performed CFD studies to understand when CFD will yield reliable and meaningful solutions for different ice shapes. It was found that CFD could predict lift and drag as a function of angle of attack almost perfectly for airfoils and wings with accrued “rime” ice. For airfoils/wings with “glaze” ice, the predictions can have considerable uncertainty.
3. Developed a highly efficient reduced-order method to predict the aerodynamic performance of wings with accrued ice that could be used to guide flight control of aircraft in icing conditions in real time.