NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF ICE ACCRETION CHARACTERISTICS ON A TYPICAL SWEPT WING CONFIGURATION

During flight, dangerous ice accretion occurs on aircraft components such as wings and engine inlets, posing a serious threat to flight safety. Analyzing and studying the icing process on wings is beneficial for subsequent deicing/anti-icing operations. In studying the icing problem on swept wings, this paper solv es the airflow field using the Navier-Stokes equations and the SA turbulence model, applies the Euler method to simulate the droplet impingement characteristics, and employs the Shallow-Water icing model to calculate the ice formation on airfoil surfaces. Under different icing conditions, a comparative analysis is conducted on the icing characteristics of straight wings and wings with various sweep angles. Numerical simulations are performed to investigate the formation mechanism of the typical "scallop" ice on a 45° swept wing, thus further studying the icing mechanism on swept wings. Subsequently, the icing problem of a blended-wing-body aircraft is studied based on the icing characteristics of swept-wing configurations. The numerical calculations predict the characteristics of ice formation on the blended-wing-body aircraft's surface and compare them with those of a conventional layout aircraft to examine the differences in icing characteristics. The results indicate that different sweep angles of wings affect the overflow effect and lead to variations in ice shape under the same icing conditions. During the formation of the "scallop" ice, the ice body is formed on the swept wing surface due to the along-span overflow effect, and the prominent ice body captures a large number of droplets, resulting in the growth of ice ridges in the upstream direction. As the ice accumulation on multiple ice ridges along the span increases, the "scallop" ice is formed. Further research reveals that the severity of icing damage to the aerodynamic shape of the blended-wing-body aircraft increases from the wing root to the wingtip, providing technical references for relevant icing studies and deicing/anti-icing design.