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Purpose The aim of this paper is to present a Eulerian–Lagrangian model of aircraft ground deicing that avoids the scale’s dispersion problem caused by the great distance between the spray nozzle and the surface to be deiced. Verification is done using the case of a hot particle liquid spray impinging on a horizontal flat plate. The impinged particles flow outwards radially from the impingement zone and form a hot film wall. The computed wall heat distribution is verified. In the end, an inclination spray’s angle study is presented. Design/methodology/approach The problem is divided into two regions. First, a 3D region is created for the evolution of the Lagrangian particles spray. A second 2D region is provided for the formation of a liquid film. The two regions exchange mass, momentum and energy through an interface. Heat losses are modelled through particles and liquid-film cooling and evaporation, particles splash and heat transfer to a fixed temperature plate. Findings For a chamber pressure of 1 bar, the predicted spray penetration is within 10 per cent of the experimental results. For this study case, the heat transfer is maximized with an inclination angle of approximately 30° of the spray. Originality/value The model presented makes it possible to simulate the impingement and heat transfer of a large-scale liquid spray with a reasonable computational cost. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this model is a first attempt of the computational fluid dynamics simulation of ground deicing.

Researchers have focused in the last five years on modelling the aircraft ground deicing process using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) in order to reduce its costs and pollution. As preliminary efforts, those studies did not model the ice melting nor the diffusion between deicing fluids and water resulting from the melting process. This paper proposes a CFD method to simulate this process filling these gaps. A particulate two-phase flow approach is used to model the spray impact on ice near the contaminated surface. Ice melting is modelled using an extended version of the enthalpy-porosity technique. The water resulting from the melting process is diffused into the deicing fluid forming a single-phase film. This paper presents a new model of the process. The model is verified and validated through three steps. (i) verification of the species transport. (ii) validation of the transient temperature field of a mixture. (iii) validation of the convective heat transfer of an impinging spray. The permeability coefficient of the enthalpy-porosity technique is then calibrated. The proposed model proved to be a suitable candidate for a parametric study of the aircraft ground deicing process. On the validation test cases, the precision of heat transfer prediction exceeds 88%. The model has the ability of predicting the deicing time and the deicing fluid quantities needed to decontaminate a surface.

The aircraft ground deicing (AGD) process is a mandatory step before taking off in a cold climate. The development of CFD (computational fluid dynamics) tools to simulate AGD could help the industry reduce its costs and limit pollution. Previous works have modelled some parts of the AGD process. Building on these previous works, this paper presents a three-dimensional (3D) CFD algorithm to simulate the process in full scale. The algorithm comprises a multi-region model where a Lagrangian method solves the spray particle equations, and an enthalpy–porosity approach with an Eulerian method simulates the ice melting. The multi-region approach is verified in this paper through a spray-tip penetration (STP) test. The STP predicted using the multi-region model had 99% agreement with the STP predicted using a Lagrangian method. Therefore, the multi-region technique correctly modeled the particle momentum between the two regions. This paper also presents a numerical calibration of the permeability coefficient for the extended enthalpy–porosity technique in the context of AGD. The numerical calibration of the permeability coefficient will enable future parametric studies of the AGD process.