Citation

Khalid M, Zhang F, Chen S. Aeronaut. J. 2002; 106(1063): 461-472.

Affiliation

Institute for Aerospace Research, National Research Council, Ottawa, Ont., Canada

Copyright

(Copyright © 2002, Royal Aeronautical Society, Publisher Cambridge University Press)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The aerodynamic performance of two dimensional (2D) aerofoils and finite aircraft wings is investigated when the leading edge is modified with a standard ice shape. Three ice-shapes, G1, G3 and R7 are selected for this investigation. For the aerofoils it was observed that the presence of strong vortex flows near the leading edge fundamentally changes the flow in that region forcing earlier transition and premature separation. Normal suction peaks designed to provide high aerodynamic lift and prolonged attached flow are replaced with a system of vortices which produce unwanted pressure spikes which influence the development of the boundary layer leading to earlier stall. The present study also includes the three dimensional (3D) effects due to iced leading edges on aircraft surfaces. As different from such studies elsewhere, which only considered the simple sweep back effects on constant cross section wings, the present work includes more realistic wings equipped with twist, taper and non-equal sweep back at leading and trailing edge of the wing. In absence of any experimental data on such real life type configurations, the computational fluid dynamic (CFD) results were first validated against measurements on non-swept wings. It was found that ice formations cause noticeable changes of the flow in the leading edge regions of the wing and promote strong 3D effects, which pervade across the entire spanwise direction of the model.

Language: en