A novel method for robust and efficient prediction of ice shedding from rotorcraft blades

Abstract

The safety of rotorcraft operating in cold environments is jeopardised by the possibility of ice accretion on the rotor blades. Eventually, ice can shed from the blade due to the high centrifugal forces and impact other parts of the rotorcraft or unbalance the rotor. To establish the shedding time and location for rotorcraft, a robust and efficent numerical multi-step icing simulations tool is presented here for predicting the shedding phenomenon. A volume-mesh based approach is used to allow for representing the ice shape. In order to increase the robustness of the method, an interpolation procedure is implemented which establishes the possible occurrence of the shedding event and restricts the search domain. Ice shapes along the blades are computed by means of two-dimensional ice accretion simulations: ice shapes are then interpolated over the blade span. Numerical results compares fairly well, in terms of shedding time and location, to the experimental ones obtained in the AERTS test facility, thus demonstrating the soundness of the present approach.

A Wind Tunnel Experimental Study on the Icing Characteristics of a Cylinder Rotating around a Vertical Axis

“…The calculation results showed good agreement with the AERTS results [15]. Alberto Guardone computed the ice shapes along the blade span using a two-dimensional ice accretion simulation and established the shedding time and location using a robust and efficient numerical multi-step icing simulation tool [16]. Jin Jiayi comparatively analyzed the simulation results for the flow behaviors and the resultant ice accretion for 2D and 3D numerical approaches [17].…”

Level-Set Mass-Conservative Front-Tracking Technique for Multistep Simulations of In-Flight Ice Accretion

“…In particular, the portion of the domain occupied by ice is represented in blue, the portion of the domain occupied by air is represented in white, and the red line represents the air-ice interface target. At this point, one can extract separately each portion of the domain (for instance, in ice accretion problems, the part of the mesh with negative 𝜙 can be used to investigate heat transfer properties or ice cracking patterns for shedding [35]), as well as the set of edges connecting all points at 𝜙 = 0 which represents the target ice-air interface at the new time step.…”