Experimental Determination of the Droplet Impingement on a Propeller Using a Modified Dye-Tracer Technique

By: Jonathan D. Reichhold

Adviser: Dr. Michael B. Bragg

M.S., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1996


ABSTRACT
Design of the de- or anti-icing systems which protect aircraft from dangerous levels of ice formation requires the knowledge of the water droplet impingement on the aircraft. This information, which is frequently determined computationally, includes the energy required per unit area and portion of the aircraft to be protected. The computational methods currently in use were validated using the NACA dye-tracer method for droplet impingement measurement. In order to decrease the cost and complexity of the droplet impingement tests, this thesis documents a new method for the data reduction which uses a digital camera and image analysis to determine the impingement information. The improved method was used to determine the impingement information for a propeller configuration. Droplet impingement information, to the author's knowledge, had not been measured on a propeller prior to this study. During the test it was found that he propeller, due to its rotation, swept through a significant amount of water. This rotational effect created droplet impingement efficiency values significantly greater than one for a large proportion of the propeller blades. This result is explained with a simple analysis using blade element theory. In addition, the propeller impingement with variations in both nacelle and number of propeller blades was studied. Droplet impingement results on a two-dimensional airfoil and a calibration of the test section spray cloud are also presented.