Investigation of Icing Effects on Aerodynamic Performance for the High-Lift Configuration of Civil Aircraft

Abstract

For flight safety reason, a better understanding of the effect of ice accretion on the aerodynamic performance is required. The ice shape used in this study is holding ice with one or two ice horns, which accretes on the unprotected surface of the aircraft. By using the verified numerical simulation method, it can be found that due to the effects of holding ice, the stall angle of the aircraft is significantly reduced and lift has a severe penalty. Besides, the pitching moment characteristics are deteriorated, which is a threat to flight safety. The main reason for the pitch up of aircraft with holding ice is the decreases in pitch-down moment of the horizontal tail affected by the iced wing and the increases in pitch-up moment provided by the wing. To avoid this, a method is proposed to improve the aerodynamic performance of iced high-lift configuration, which is shortened inner slat. It can be seen that the obvious improvement in pitching moment characteristics is at the expense of the slight decrease in lift for the iced high-lift configuration. Besides, this method has little effect on aerodynamic performance of the clean configuration.