Conjugate Heat Transfer and Aerothermal Wall Modeling for In-Flight Icing Conditions
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: In-flight ice accretion severely degrades the aerodynamics of lifting surfaces andis closely tied to the wall heat transfer that governs phase change at the fluid–iceinterface. This paper presents a conjugate heat transfer (CHT) methodology thatcouples a 2D compressible RANS solver (k–ω SST) on an evolving unstructured meshwith the solution of heat conduction within the growing ice layer, whose consistencyis checked by a 1D thermal model with adaptive accretion rate. Applied to a NACA-0012 airfoil (M∞ = 0.5, Re = 8.96 × 106) over a 300 s exposure, the simulationpredicts a maximum ice thickness of 9.27 mm, leading to a 32.4 % drop in maximumlift coefficient (CL,max) and a 2.9 % increase in drag at zero angle of attack. This worklays the groundwork for the future integration of electrothermal de-icing systems andfor experimental validation in an icing wind tunnel.
Language: English
Subfield: Aerospace Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7223690557