A Numerical Investigation into the Impact of Icing on the Aerodynamic Performance of Aerofoils

Aircraft wings and wind turbine blades are often subjected to harsh and cold climatic conditions. Icing is often observed on wing and blade surfaces in these cold climatic conditions. Wind turbine blades, in particular, are severely impacted by ice accretion which greatly hampers their performance and energy generation efficiency. Ice-accretion patterns are observed to vary with changes in temperature. As the temperature changes, the thickness of the ice accretion, the shape and location of ice-accretion vary greatly. In this paper, three different ice accretion patterns and their impact on the aerofoil efficiency have been investigated using the SST k - ω model in ANSYS CFD. An analysis of the impact of ice-accretion through a comparison of lift and drag coefficients for all three ice accretion patterns indicate that the accretion of ice on an aerofoil can reduce lift generation by 75.3% and increase drag by 280% thereby severely impacting the performance of the aerofoil. The loss in aerodynamic performance is greatly dependent on the ridge height, the extent of ice accretion and the thickness of this ice. The loss in aerodynamic performance has no fixed correlation to the drop in temperature.