Icing Simulation Studies on the NRC Rotating Rig

Crystal icing in the engine core has been identified as a significant potential threat to operational aircraft safety, and therefore understanding and mitigating the associated risk is of paramount importance to engine manufacturers. Its importance has motivated numerous research and development efforts, from industry and academia, to characterize and quantify the phenomena, to determine the onset of accretion on a given engine component and characterize the local conditions causing it. The present work describes collaborative work performed as part of a partnership between NRC and Ansys to bring their combined experimental and simulation expertise to bear on better understanding of the engine icing problem. The initial focus of this collaboration is on evaluating the current capability of icing simulation tools in the context of engine icing. For this purpose, the experimental ICE-MACR test rig at NRC was modelled in a simulation environment using Ansys CFD software. Simulation results are compared to experimental observations, highlighting key icing physics models required to represent the engine icing environment with the required accuracy. The results both establish current simulation capabilities and identify any gaps that need to be addressed for simulation to better complement and optimize physical experiments.