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A helicopter blade profile was tested in the DGA Aero-engine Testing's icing altitude test facility S1 in Saclay, France during the winter of 2013/2014. The airfoil was a helicopter main rotor OA312 blade profile made out of composite material and with a metallic erosion shield. Dry air and ice accretion tests have been performed in order to assess the iced airfoil's aerodynamic behaviour. Several icing conditions were tested up through Mach numbers around 0.6. This paper presents the test setup, the test model and some of the test results. The test results presented in this paper include the ice shapes generated as well as dry air and iced airfoil lift and drag curves (polars) which were obtained with the real ice shapes on the airfoil.

Different Airbus Helicopters main rotor blade profiles were tested in different icing wind tunnels and for different icing conditions. One of the objectives of the accretion tests was to validate the use of 2D icing scaling laws established for fixed wing aircraft on helicopter blade profiles. Therefore, ice shapes resulting from tests with the same icing similarity parameters are compared to each other allowing the assessment of icing scaling laws for helicopter applications. This paper presents the icing scaling laws used at Airbus Helicopters on blade profiles, the different test set ups and test models and it presents the comparison of the ice shapes collected during the icing wind tunnel test campaigns.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the methodology to develop a simple model to assess performance degradation of the helicopter due to ice accretion on rotor blades (main and tail rotors). The main idea is to use icing scaling laws and check their validity in the frame of performance. Therefore, as a first step, a review and a discussion are presented on icing scaling laws in order to compare simple parameters which describe several phenomena involved in the accretion process (water quantity, droplet trajectories, etc…) with available Eurocopter data. The second step is the identification of a global parameter which allows describing 2D airfoil drag degradation in a comprehensive way. In addition, an empirical law for 2D airfoil lift degradation and a criterion for natural ice shedding of blades are built in order to complete this modelling for helicopter rotors.