A Eulerian Method for Water Droplet Impingement by Means of an Immersed Boundary Technique

Abstract

The estimation of water droplet impingement is the first step toward a complete ice accretion assessment. Numerical approaches are usually implied to support the experimental testing and to provide fast responses when designing ice protection systems. Basically, two different numerical methodologies can be found in literature: Lagrangian and Eulerian. The present paper describes the design and development of a tool based on a Eulerian equation set solved on Cartesian meshes by using an immersed boundary (IB) technique. The tool aims at computing the evolution of a droplet cloud and the impingement characteristics onto the exposed surfaces of an aircraft. The robustness of the methodology and the accuracy of the approach are discussed. The method is applying to classical twoand threedimensional test cases for which experimental data are available in literature. The results are compared with both experiments and bodyfitted numerical solutions.