Kinetic and thermal simulation of water droplets in icing wind tunnels

Within the certification process of aircraft, tests under specific icing conditions are required. For such safety relevant tests—which are performed under defined and repeatable test conditions—specially equipped Icing Wind Tunnels (IWT) are required. In such IWTs, supercooled water droplets are created with the aid of a spray system injecting pre-tempered water droplets of specific diameters into the free stream air flow. Especially tests with a droplet size up to 2mm (Supercooled Large Droplets - SLDs) are of great importance. SLDs are difficult to generate under laboratory conditions in IWT since usually the available droplet flight time from the injection location to the impact position on the test object is insufficient to reliably cool down a droplet at least to freezing temperature. To investigate the limitations associated with the application of SLD, the current work provides a method to allow detailed insight into the behavior of droplets on the path from the injection spray nozzle to the test section. In this work a state space model of a single droplet is derived that combines the kinetic aspects, thermal properties as well as the governing differential equations for motion, convective heat transfer at the droplet surface and heat conduction inside the droplet. Beside the states for the droplet’s position and velocity in space, the state space vector comprises various fluid and thermodynamic parameters. The droplet-internal temperature distribution is modelled by a discrete one-dimensional spherical shell model that also incorporates the aggregate phase (freezing mass fraction) at each shell node. This approach allows, therefore, the simulation of potential droplet phase change processes (freezing/melting) as well. With the model at hand, the influence of various boundary conditions (initial droplet temperature, flow field, ambient air temperature, etc.) can be determined and evaluated. As a result, concrete measures to achieve a desired operating condition (e.g. droplet temperature at the test object) for various model assumptions can be derived. In addition, the simulation model facilitates the prediction of the droplet diameter threshold for ensuring a supercooled state upon the impact on the test object. The governing theoretical influences are described, and various simulation results for representative test conditions that occur at the Rail-Tec-Arsenal (RTA) in Vienna are presented.

Investigation of Droplet Impinging on a Heated Porous Surface Under Various Working Conditions; A Mathematical Modeling

This study numerically investigated the behavior of a Newtonian droplet impacting a heated porous surface. In this regard, a two-phase finite volume code was used for laminar flow. The time adaptive method was applied to enhance the accuracy of results and better convergence of the solving process. Also, the dynamic grid adaptation technique was adopted to predict the liquid-air interface precisely. The results were first validated against experimental data at different Weber numbers. Then the effect of variations in the droplet temperature was investigated on the spreading factor. The obtained results revealed that the rise in droplet temperature led to an increase in the maximum spreading diameter due to the reduction in the effects of viscosity, density, and surface tension. In the next step, the effects of droplet impact on the hydrophilic and superhydrophobic surfaces with the porosities of 20–80% were evaluated. The obtained results revealed that the increase in the surface porosity caused a decrease in the droplet diameter during the impact time. Also, at high surface porosity values, the decline in the contact angle influence on the droplet dynamic behavior was observed.