Aerodynamics of Ice Remnants from Protected Surfaces

Andy P. Broeren, and Michael B. Bragg
University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, 61801


ABSTRACT
This paper presents a compilation of aerodynamic data for airfoils with ice remnants.  Ice remnants is defined as ice accretion associated with the operation of ice-protection systems. Changes in drag and maximum lift coefficient are summarized for many different cases. It was found that there is a lack of data for residual ice simulations on airfoils, where the leading edge and stagnation region is free of ice roughness. In contrast, there are numerous studies detailing the aerodynamic effects of intercycle ice. In the case of spanwise ridge ice resulting from heated leading-edge ice-protection systems (runback ice) or SLD accretions, there is also a lack of data for real ice accretion or high-fidelity simulations on airfoils. The existing data indicate that uniform, or standard roughness such as sandpaper that is applied over the leading-edge and stagnation point region may be an adequate representation of residual ice, but is likely too conservative in terms of maximum lift penalty. For some intercycle accretions, like those resulting from one-minute deicer cycles, the lift and drag penalties could be adequately simulated with uniform roughness. As the deicer cycle time increases from one to three minutes, intercycle ice shapes develop larger features that lead to more significant separated flow areas and larger performance penalties. Some may have characteristics of spanwise-ridge ice that are often simulated with simple geometric shapes. These results show a very large range of performance characteristics from increases in maximum lift to very large decreases in maximum lift. It is difficult to evaluate some of these results because the simple geometries used to represent the ice ridges do not capture the complexities of the actual ice accretion. More data are needed to better understand the flowfield physics.





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