Predictive LES of Aircraft Icing Aerodynamics

Speaker: Brett Bornhoft, Center for Turbulence Research, Stanford University
March 21, 2024

Presentation

Abstract

Predicting the aerodynamic performance of aircraft in icing conditions is crucial for ensuring flight safety. Modeling icing and its effect on aerodynamics has recently garnered attention both in academia and industry due to the changes to the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) in 2007. The changes state that the certification of transport-category airplanes requires the same handling/performance in both icing and non-icing conditions. This has motivated airplane designers to include icing effects in the first stage of the design process.

Encouraged by recent studies using LES that demonstrate the ability to predict stall characteristics on full aircraft with smooth wings at an affordable cost (Goc et al. FLOW, 2021), this study seeks to apply this methodology to icing conditions. Using laser-scanned, detailed representations of the icing geometries, wall-modeled LES calculations are conducted to compare integrated loads against experimental measurements in a variety of icing conditions, including glaze, rime, and scallop ice formations. Good agreement is achieved for both the glaze and scallop ice shapes. The rime ice geometry simulations showed that the roughness was completely sub-grid. A new roughness wall model was developed and obtained a marked improvement in the calculation of the integrated forces. These modeling efforts provide heightened confidence in the application of WMLES for accurately predicting the complex effects of ice shapes on aerodynamic performance.

Biography

Brett Bornhoft is a DoD SMART scholar and postgraduate student working under the guidance of Professor Parviz Moin at the Center for Turbulence Research (CTR) within Stanford University's Mechanical Engineering Department. Prior to joining Stanford, Brett served as a Research Aerospace Engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory's High-Speed Systems Division. He earned his bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering technology from Middle Tennessee State University in 2014 and his master's degree in aerospace engineering from North Carolina State University in 2016. Brett's research interests lie at the intersection of developing performance portable and scalable software and simulating complex fluid dynamic systems. These encompass areas such as compressible multiphase flows, high-speed air-breathing propulsion, aircraft icing, and wall-bounded turbulent flows.

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