Experiments on surface roughness effects in ice accretion

Current numerical simulations of ice accretion on aircraft wings rely on control-volume analyses of heat transfer and freezing that do not properly account for the effect of surface roughness and other features on liquid water transport and convective heat transfer. It is acknowledged that for these simulations to correctly model glaze ice accretion such details must be handled in a physically correct manner. The need for improved simulations is prompting an experimental program that will examine micro-scale phenomena in icing boundary layers and also a rexamination of surface roughness effects. In this paper, the role of roughness in boundary layers is briefly reviewed with an emphasis on laminar-to-turbulent transition effects and recent developments on roughness-induced transient growth. Also, a new experimental facility known as the Icing Physics Flow Laboratory is described. This facility is designed to accomodate validation experiments for numerical simulations of micro-scale icing phenomena. 2005 by the authors.

Experiments on surface roughness effects in ice accretion Conference Paper