An Immersed Boundary Method for Multi-Step Ice Accretion using a Level-Set
P. Lavoie, Emmanuel Radenac, Ghislain Blanchard, Éric Laurendeau, Philippe Villedieu
Abstract
View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-2630.vid The numerical prediction of in-flight ice accretion involves a sequential call to different modules including mesh generation, aerodynamics, droplet trajectories, wall heat transfer, ice accretion and geometry update. The automation of this process is critical as these solvers are embedded in a time loop which is repeated several times to obtain an accurate ice shape prediction. The robustness of ice accretion tools is often limited by the difficulty of generating meshes on complex ice shapes and also by the geometry update which can exhibit overlaps if not treated properly. As a replacement to the usual body-fitted approach, this paper investigates the application of an immersed boundary method in the ice accretion framework to avoid the mesh generation step. A level-set method is also used for the geometry update to automatically handle pathological cases. The proposed methodology is tested on 2D rime and glaze ice cases from the 1st AIAA Ice Prediction Workshop, showing good correspondence with the body-fitted approach. The new methodology also performs well for a 2D three-element airfoil configuration when a proper mesh refinement is used. The immersed boundary method combined with the level-set ice accretion provides a viable alternative to the body-fitted approach.