Large-Eddy Simulation of an Iced Swept Wing: A Perspective on the Aerodynamic Effect of Triggering Resolved Turbulence

Speaker: David Craig Penner, Analytical Mechanics Associates, NASA Ames Research Center
February 12, 2026

Presentation

Abstract

Ice buildup on aircraft surfaces during flight is a critical safety concern due to its known adverse effects, including reduced lift and increased drag. Predicting the aerodynamics of iced wings remains a challenge for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) because ice shapes often induce large scale turbulent separation, even at angles of attack below the stall of the clean wing. Building on the success within the CFD community of using large-eddy simulation (LES) to accurately capture the aerodynamics of clean wings near stall, LES of a swept wing with leading-edge ice buildup is performed using the Launch, Ascent, and Vehicle Aerodynamics (LAVA) framework and compared to experimental results. The study focuses on an 8.9% scale model of the CRM65 swept wing featuring both high-fidelity and smooth leading-edge ice shapes at a Mach number of 0.18 and a Reynolds number per mean aerodynamic chord of 1.6 million. For the high-fidelity ice shape, good agreement with the experiment is obtained with wall-modeled LES (WMLES). However, for the smooth ice shape, triggering resolved turbulence near the leading edge is required to obtain comparable accuracy at similar mesh resolutions. Simulations of the tripped clean wing are used to quantify the predicted aerodynamic degradation due to icing across an angle of attack sweep. Finally, for the smooth ice and clean wing, a hybrid Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes/LES model is shown to be competitive with WMLES in both accuracy and computational cost.

Biography

David Craig Penner is a research engineer with Analytical Mechanics Associates in the Computational Aerosciences Branch of NASA’s Advanced Supercomputing Division at Ames Research Center. He joined the Launch, Ascent, and Vehicle Aerodynamics (LAVA) group in June 2022, where his work focuses on scale-resolving simulations of iced aerodynamics and the development of numerical methods. He earned a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Saskatchewan and a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies under the supervision of Professor David Zingg.

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