An efficient CFD-based method for aircraft icing simulation using a reduced order model

Abstract

In-flight icing is a critical technical issue for aircraft safety and, in particular, the droplet impingement areas on aircraft surfaces must be investigated for anti-/de-icing devices. As a step toward the prediction of droplet impingement on aircraft, an Eulerian-based droplet impingement code that provides collection efficiency for air flows around an airfoil containing water droplets is developed. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver was also developed to solve the clean airflow. Then, a proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) method, a reduced order model (ROM), that optimally captures the energy content from a large multi-dimensional data set is utilized to efficiently predict the collection efficiency and ice accretion shapes on an airfoil following the mean volume diameter, liquid water contents and angle of attacks. As a result it is shown that the collection efficiency and ice shapes were in good agreement with the simulated and predicted results.