An analytical approach to airfoil icing

Abstract

An analytical procedure has been developed to predict rime ice growth on unprotected airfoil sections and to evaluate the aerodynamic performance. A time stepping method is used in which: (1) water droplet trajectories are calculated, (2) a rime ice shape determined, (3) the flowfield around the iced airfoil is recalculated, and (4) the build-up process iterated upon until the desired icing time is reached. The performance of the iced airfoil shapes are then determined from existing analytic methods. Rime ice shapes determined in the NASA Lewis Icing Research Tunnel on a modified NACA 64 series airfoil agree well with the shapes predicted by the analytical method. Measured and predicted increases in drag due to the rime ice also agree favorably. A simplified scaling analysis is also presented and verified which provides the duplication of full scale results of rime ice accretions in small scale model tests.