CFD Model for Aircraft Ground Deicing: Verification and Validation of an Extended Enthalpy-Porosity Technique in Particulate Two Phase Flows

Researchers have focused in the last five years on modelling the aircraft ground deicing process using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) in order to reduce its costs and pollution. As preliminary efforts, those studies did not model the ice melting nor the diffusion between deicing fluids and water resulting from the melting process. This paper proposes a CFD method to simulate this process filling these gaps. A particulate two-phase flow approach is used to model the spray impact on ice near the contaminated surface. Ice melting is modelled using an extended version of the enthalpy-porosity technique. The water resulting from the melting process is diffused into the deicing fluid forming a single-phase film. This paper presents a new model of the process. The model is verified and validated through three steps. (i) verification of the species transport. (ii) validation of the transient temperature field of a mixture. (iii) validation of the convective heat transfer of an impinging spray. The permeability coefficient of the enthalpy-porosity technique is then calibrated. The proposed model proved to be a suitable candidate for a parametric study of the aircraft ground deicing process. On the validation test cases, the precision of heat transfer prediction exceeds 88%. The model has the ability of predicting the deicing time and the deicing fluid quantities needed to decontaminate a surface.