A laser-based ice shape profilometer for use in icing wind tunnels

摘要

A laser-based profilometer was developed to measure the thickness and shape of ice accretions on the leading edge of airfoils and other models in icing wind tunnels. The instrument is a hand held device that is connected to a desk top computer with a 10 meter cable. It projects a laser line onto an ice shape and used solid state cameras to detect the light scattered by the ice. The instrument corrects the image for camera angle distortions, displays an outline of the ice shape on the computer screen, saves the data on a disk, and can print a full scale drawing of the ice shape. The profilometer has undergone extensive testing in the laboratory and in the NASA Lewis Icing Research Tunnel. Results of the tests show very good agreement between profilometer measurements and known simulated ice shapes and fair agreement between profilometer measurements and hand tracing techniques.