Project Description

Aircraft icing usually occurs when aircraft fly through clouds which contain so called supercooled droplets. This term stands for liquid droplets with temperatures below their freezing point. If such supercooled droplets hit aircraft surfaces, they can freeze, which results in ice accretion. Regrettably, even within the recent past years, several incidents and accidents occurred because of ice accretion. The aerospace industry must develop sustainable, cost efficient and safe ice protection systems, and prove their functionality during strict certification procedures. State of the art methods to determine and characterize ice formations on aircraft structures include performing experimental tests (inside icing wind tunnels or in natural or artificial icing conditions during flight tests) and 2D simulation tools. The experimental methods are time and cost consuming and because of their uncertainties result in strongly conservative system designs.

The 3D-ICESIM project aims to develop a well validated 3D icing code as solution. A well validated 3D icing code would be of great benefit to the development process of new ice protection systems and innovative aircraft. It can reduce the required test effort in icing wind tunnels and flight tests substantially, as well as improve and speed up the development process. In addition to the resulting time and cost savings, there is also a positive effect for the climate and the environment. Optimizations in testing and more efficient ice protection systems reduce energy consumption and emissions considerably.

Aircraft icing usually occurs when aircraft fly through clouds which contain so called supercooled droplets. This term stands for liquid droplets with temperatures below their freezing point. If such supercooled droplets hit aircraft surfaces, they can freeze, which results in ice accretion. Regrettably, even within the recent past years, several incidents and accidents occurred because of ice accretion. The aerospace industry must develop sustainable, cost efficient and safe ice protection systems, and prove their functionality during strict certification procedures. State of the art methods to determine and characterize ice formations on aircraft structures include performing experimental tests (inside icing wind tunnels or in natural or artificial icing conditions during flight tests) and 2D simulation tools. The experimental methods are time and cost consuming and because of their uncertainties result in strongly conservative system designs.

The requirement therefore is a strong long-term cooperation in the field of 3D ice code development. The 3D-ICESIM project enables this and makes it possible to maintain and strengthen competitiveness, targeting industry and research applications in an international environment. The existing icing codes developed by FH JOANNEUM, AeroTex and Seoul National University are merged and jointly improved. Experimental documentation methods are developed to increase the output of icing tests significantly. This includes water impingement measurements, the determination of local ice density as well as the measurement of the local heat transfer coefficient.

High-quality 3D validation data is generated during an icing wind tunnel test campaign at RTA. The tests are captured with the newly developed methods as well as with state-of-the-art documentation methods like 3D and 4D scanning. The validation data is evaluated appropriately and integrated into the world’s largest online and searchable validation database for experimental icing tests.

Top-level Goals

1. Merging the existing simulation tools (FHJ, ATX and SNU) and group the code development capacities to generate advanced 3D ice accretion tools.
2. Development of new and enhanced experimental documentation methods to enable the generation of high-quality validation data.
3. Generation and evaluation of high-quality 3D validation data.

Project Partners

Funding

Project 3D-IceSim has received funding from the Federal Ministry of Austria for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK) as part of the Austrian Aeronautics Programme TAKE OFF via the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG).