Iced-airfoil aerodynamics

Past research on airfoil aerodynamics in icing are reviewed. This review emphasizes the time period after the 1978 NASA Lewis workshop that initiated the modern icing research program at NASA and the current period after the 1994 ATR accident where aerodynamics research has been more aircraft safety focused. Research pre-1978 is also briefly reviewed. Following this review, our current knowledge of iced airfoil aerodynamics is presented from a flowfield-physics perspective. This article identifies four classes of ice accretions: roughness, horn ice, streamwise ice, and spanwise-ridge ice. For each class, the key flowfield features such as flowfield separation and reattachment are discussed and how these contribute to the known aerodynamic effects of these ice shapes. Finally Reynolds number and Mach number effects on iced-airfoil aerodynamics are summarized.