Computations of droplet impingement on airfoils in two-phase flow

The aerodynamic effects of leading-edge accretion can raise important safety concerns since the formulation of ice causes severe degradation in aerodynamic performance as compared with the clean airfoil. The objective of this study is to develop a numerical simulation strategy for predicting the particle trajectory around an MS-0317 airfoil in the test section of the NASA Glenn Icing Research Tunnel and to investigate the impingement characteristics of droplets on the airfoil surface. In particular, predictions of the mean velocity and turbulence diffusion using turbulent flow solver and continuous random walk method were desired throughout this flow domain in order to investigate droplet dispersion. The collection efficiency distributions over the airfoil surface in simulations with different numbers of droplets, various integration time-steps and particle sizes were compared with experimental data. The large droplet impingement data indicated the trends in impingement characteristics with respect to particle size; the maximum collection efficiency located at the upper surface near the leading edge, and the maximum value and total collection efficiency were increased as the particle size was increased. The extent of the area impinged on by particles also increased with the increment of the particle size, which is similar as compared with experimental data