Modeling of Ice Accretion over Aircraft Wings Using a Compressible OpenFOAM Solver

Abstract EN

A method to simulate ice accretion on an aircraft wing using a three-dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes solver, a Eulerian droplet flow field model, a mesh morphing model, and a thermodynamic model, is presented in this paper.

The above models are combined together into one solver and implemented in OpenFOAM.

Two-way coupling is achieved between airflow field calculation and ice simulation.

The density-based solver rhoEnergyFoam is used to calculate the airflow field.

The roughness wall function is proposed to simulate the roughness effect caused by ice accretion.

For droplet flow field calculation, the Eulerian model is applied and the permeable wall boundary condition is used on the wing to simulate the droplet impingement.

The icing thermodynamic model is built based on the Messinger model.

The mesh morphing model adjusts the wing’s shape every time step based on the amount of accreted ice so that the airflow field is updated during the simulation.

The effect of the ice accretion on the airflow is studied by comparing the aerodynamic performance—with and without ice.

The ice accretion on the ONERA M6 wing model under a specific condition has been simulated to validate the solver’s performance and investigate the effect of the accreted ice on the aerodynamic performance.