Three-dimensional conjugate heat transfer simulation of aircraft hot-air anti-icing systems.

摘要

When an aircraft flies through clouds under icy conditions, supercooled water droplets at temperatures below the freezing point may impact on its surfaces and result in ice accretion. The design of efficient devices to protect aircraft against in-flight icing continues to be a challenging task in the aerospace industry. Advanced numerical tools to simulate complex conjugate heat transfer phenomena associated with hot-air anti-icing are needed. In this work, a 3D conjugate heat transfer procedure based on a loose-coupling method has been developed to solve the following four domains: the external airflow, the water film, conduction in the solid, and the internal airflow. The domains are solved sequentially and iteratively, with an exchange of thermal conditions at common interfaces until equilibrium of the entire system is achieved. A verification test case shows the capability of the approach in simulating a variety of anti-icing and de-icing cases: fully evaporative, running wet, or iced. The approach is validated against a 2D dry air experimental test case, because of the dearth of appropriate open literature 3D test data.