The Aerodynamic Studies of Aircraft Wings with Leading Edge Deformations due to Accreted Ice

The aerodynamic performance of finite aircraft wings is investigated when the leading edge is modified with a standard ice shape. Three iceshapes, Gl, G3 and R7 are selected for this investigation. As different from such studies elsewhere, which only considered the simple sweep back effects on constant cross section wings, the present work includes more realistic wings equipped with twist, taper and non-equal sweep back at leading and trailing edge of the wing. In absence of any experimental data on such real life type configurations, the CFD results were first validated against measurements on non-swept and simple swept wings. Then further investigations were carried out on the twisted and tapered swept wings. It was found that ice formations cause noticeable transformations of the flow in the leading edge regions of the wing and promote strong 3D effects, which pervade across the entire spanwise direction of the model.