An ALE mesh movement scheme for long-term in-flight ice accretion

The rather irregular shapes that glaze ice may grow into while accreting over the surface of an aircraft represent a major difficulty in the numerical simulation of long periods of in-flight icing. There is a constant need for remeshing: a wasteful procedure. In the framework of ALE formulations, a mesh movement scheme is presented, in which frame and elasticity analogies are loosely coupled. The resulting deformed mesh preserves the quality of elements, especially in the near-wall region, where accurate prediction of heat flux and shear stresses is required. The proposed scheme handles mesh deformation in a computationally efficient manner by localizing the mesh deformation. The 2D problem of ice accretion over single and multi-element airfoils is considered here as a numerical experiment. Experimentally measured glaze ice shapes were used to evaluate the performance of the present approach.