Computational study on two dimensional electrothermal deicing problem

Abstract

For airplane deicing problem, two dimensional electrothermal deicing model is established. The numerical study on heat transfer characteristics during electrothermal deicing process is presented. The Enthalpy-Porous Medium method is applied to describe the phase change process for the numerical simulation, which is a kind of enthalpy model. The computational domain is treated as a porous medium including solid ice and water liquid and mushy zone. The structured mesh topology is used to distribute the computational domain. The finite volume method is adopted to discretize the governing equations. The temperature is obtained by iteration of the energy equation coupled with the liquid volume fraction formula. The properties such as thermal conductivity of the mushy zone can be obtained by linear interpolation. The heat transfer characteristics are studied systematically for deicer pad including phase change process. The numerical study emphasizes on the effects of heating mode, cooling time, heater power and heater gap on phase change heat transfer characteristics. It shows that periodic heating mode for high heater power is superior to continuous heating mode for low heater power if reasonable combination of cooling time and heater power are adopted to obtain better deicing performance and less energy consumption. The existence of heater gap will decrease energy consumption less and make the temperature distribution more reasonable. Therefore, the reasonable distribution of heater gap can largely improve the deicing efficiency which is beneficial for the design of electrothermal deicer.