Numerical Simulation of Rotorcraft Icing: Accretion, Shedding, Tracking and Rotor Dynamics

The chapter presents a comprehensive 3-Dgeneric and portable computational toolset to assess the impact of ice accretion on helicopters in hover and forward flight. This includes rotorcraft airflow, impingement, ice accretion, shedding, shed-ice tracking and iced rotor dynamics. Mesh stitching techniques suitable for unsteady ice accretion and for the simultaneous solution of airflow and droplet impingement over rotating (blades) and non-rotating (fuselage and boom) components of a helicopter are developed. Methods of varying fidelity are proposed for the cracking and tracking of the ice shed. Finally, the rigid and elastic motions of iced blades are modeled through the coupling of airflow and multi-body dynamics solvers. The toolbox is validated against the limited number of open literature experimental icing data available for helicopters.