The Supercooled Large Droplet (SLD) problem in aircraft icing has gained more and more importance during last years. Several experimental, numerical and regulation efforts have been spent to bridge the knowledge gap. New phenomena have been unveiled and studied to address and explain the peculiar features which characterizes the dynamics of a SLD water cloud. With reference to the impact behaviour of a SLD cloud onto an aircraft surface, the authors present a numerical method to model the basic impact phenomena and effects at aircraft component level. Several semi-empirical models drawn by literature findings are presented and implemented in a software code to evaluate the water droplet impingement sensitivity in the SLD regime. The computational framework is Eulerian, thus a PDE problem is solved for the water droplet field in a specified space domain. As a consequence, the new SLD modeling does not act on the single particle when it hits the surface but it has to be formulated as a wall sink/source in the water flow field. To this aim, a new approach is presented, discussed and compared to existing data. Results show that, even if physics understanding and modeling must be still carefully considered and further developed, the presented approach shows a big potential towards a more realistic prediction of SLD icing.
Nomenclatureα Phase volume fraction ρ Phase mass density, kg/m 3 m Phase mass, kg V Phase volume, m 3 V Phase velocity, m/s V n,p Droplet normal to wall velocity component, m/s β Collection efficiency γ Mass loading δ Phase mass density ratio e Droplet eccentricity θ Impact angle, measured from the wall normal θ Impact angle, measured from the wall tangent LW C Liquid water content, kg/m 3 M V D Mean Volumetric Diameter, µ D p Droplet diameter, m f * Dimensionless droplet frequency = 3 2 LW C Dp 1/3 µ Dynamic viscosity, kg/(m s)