An Experimental and Numerical Study of Icing Effects on the Performance and Controllability of a Twin Engine Aircraft

TITLE AND SUBTITLE:
An Experimental and Numerical Study of Icing Effects on the Performance and Controllability of a Twin Engine Aircraft

AUTHOR(S):
A. Reehorst, J. Chung, M. Potapczuk, Y. Choo, W. Wright, and T. Langhals

REPORT DATE:
January 1999

FUNDING NUMBERS:
WU-548-20-23-00

PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES):
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Lewis Research Center
Cleveland, Ohio 44135-3191

PERFORMING ORGANIZATION REPORT NUMBER:
E-11495

SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES):
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Washington, DC 20546-0001

REPORT TYPE AND DATES COVERED:
Technical Memorandum

SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY REPORT NUMBER:
NASA TM-1999-208896
AIAA-99-0374

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES:
Prepared for the 37th Aerospace Sciences Meeting & Exhibit sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Reno, Nevada, January 11-14, 1999. A. Reehorst, M. Potapczuk, and Y. Choo, NASA Lewis Research Center; J. Chung, Institute for Computational Mechanics in Propulsion, Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio 44135; W. Wright and T. Langhals, Dynacs Engineering Company, Inc., 2001 Aerospace Parkway, Brook Park, Ohio 44142. Responsible person, A. Reehorst, organization code 5840, (216)433-3938.

ABSTRACT:
In September 1997 the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) requested assistance from the NASA Lewis Research Center (LeRC) Icing Branch in the investigation of an aircraft accident that was suspected of being caused by ice contamination. In response to the request NASA agreed to perform an experimental and computational study. The main activities that NASA performed were LeRC Icing Research Tunnel (IRT) testing to define ice shapes and 2-D Navier-Stokes analysis to determine the performance degradation that those ice shapes would have caused. An IRT test was conducted in January 1998. Most conditions for the test were based upon raw and derived data from the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) recovered from the accident and upon the current understanding of the Meteorological conditions near the accident. Using a two-dimensional Navier-Stokes code, the flow field and resultant lift and drag were calculated for the wing section with various ice shapes accreted in the IRT test. Before the final calculations could be performed extensive examinations of geometry smoothing and turbulence were conducted. The most significant finding of this effort is that several of the five-minute ice accretions generated in the IRT were found by the Navier-Stokes analysis to produce severe lift and drag degradation. The information generated by this study suggests a possible scenario for the kind of control upset recorded in the accident. Secondary findings were that the ice shapes accreted in the IRT were mostly limited to the protected pneumatic boot region of the wing and that during testing, activation of the pneumatic boots cleared most of the ice.

SUBJECT TERMS:
Aircraft safety; Aircraft icing; Wind tunnel tests; Computational fluid dynamics;
Aerodynamic characteristics

NUMBER OF PAGES:
22

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