Computational fluid dynamics analysis and field measurements on ice accretion on a cup anemometer support arm

Highlights: • A CFD based icing model was developed in ANSYS Fluent. • Ice was modelled over 1 h using experimental data as input conditions. • The modelled ice thickness showed great agreement with the experimental data. • The modelled ice was successfully included in the existing geometry by an iterative process in between every time step. - Abstract: Ice growth on structures is a problem in cold climate regions. A method to model ice accretion on the cross section of a cup-anemometer support arm is presented in this study. The model was developed in ANSYS Fluent by implementing existing icing theory and by developing the dynamic meshing package to match ice accretion through user defined functions (UDFs). The Euler-Euler multiphase model was used to model in-cloud icing conditions and an impingement model was implemented to extract the ice deposit per time step. A surface boundary displacement model was implemented to determine the new surface contour after ice deposit and the surface boundary is displaced by an iterative process between each time-step. Icing was simulated over time by using measurements of the atmospheric conditions from a cold climate site in Canada. The numerical results were validated using experimental data and compare well with the experiments, when simulating 1 h of icing.