Design and Analysis Tools

The Icing Branch has a continuing, multidisciplinary research effort aimed at the development of design and analysis tools to aid aircraft manufacturers, subsystem manufacturers, certification authorities, the military, and other Government agencies in assessing the behavior of aircraft systems in an icing environment. These tools consist of com­putational and experimental simulation methods that are validated, robust, and well documented. In addition, these tools are supported through the creation of extensive databases used for validation, cor­relation, and similitude. Current software offerings include LEWICE, LEWICE 3D, and SmaggIce. LEWICE 3D is computationally fast and can handle large problems on workstations and personal computers. It is a diverse, inexpensive tool for use in determining the icing charac­teristics of arbitrary aircraft surfaces. The code can interface with most
3-D flow solvers and can generate solutions on workstations and per­sonal computers for most cases in less than several hours.[1263]

SmaggIce is short for Surface Modeling and Grid Generation for Iced Airfoils. It is a software toolkit used in the process of predicting the aerodynamic performance ice-covered airfoils using grid-based Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). It includes tools for data prob­ing, boundary smoothing, domain decomposition, and structured grid generation and refinement. SmaggIce provides the underlying compu­tations to perform these functions, a GUI (Graphical User Interface) to control and interact with those functions, and graphical displays of results. Until 3-D ice geometry acquisition and numerical flow sim­ulation become easier and faster for studying the effects of icing on wing performance, a 2-D CFD analysis will have to play an important role in complementing flight and wind tunnel tests and in providing insights to effects of ice on airfoil aerodynamics. Even 2-D CFD analy­sis, however, can take a lot of work using the currently available general – purpose grid-generation tools. These existing grid tools require extensive experience and effort on the part of the engineer to generate appropriate grids for moderately complex ice. In addition, these general – purpose tools do not meet unique requirements of icing effects study: ice shape characterization, geometry data evaluation and modification, and grid quality control for various ice shapes. So, SmaggIce is a 2-D software toolkit under development at GRC. It is designed to stream­line the entire 2-D icing aerodynamic analysis process from geometry preparation to grid generation to flow simulation, and to provide unique tools that are required for icing effects study.[1264]