Technical Paper
Simulation of Drop Collection with Non-Uniform Cloud Distributions for Collection Efficiency Sensor Validation
2023-06-15
2023-01-1405
Large icing wind tunnels typically have sufficient distance for drops from spray nozzles to spread evenly producing small spatial variations of cloud properties at the wind tunnel test section. As the size of a wind tunnel gets smaller, producing clouds with uniform properties becomes challenging because of 1) the reduced distance from the spray bar system to the test section and 2) the spray characteristics of most air-assisted nozzles used for spray generation. For this paper, discrete-phase simulations using FLUENT were used to explore droplet collection on a partial NACA 0012 model at different angles of attack in the Baylor Liquid Film and Cloud Tunnel (LFACT). McClain et al. (2022) used the LFACT to validate a new microwave sensor system to measure collection efficiency variations along the surface of a wind tunnel model. However, the sensors used in the investigation were essentially the same size as the measured non-uniform cloud features in the wind tunnel test section.