Experimental Investigation of Icing Effects on Aerodynamic Parameters of NACA 23012 Airfoil

Aviation accidents due to the icing of aircraft wings in recent years raised the need for investigation of this phenomenon. In this paper, icing on NACA 23012 airfoil, due to the frequent usage in general aviation and also severe impact of the icing on this airfoil, has been studied. To study the effects of icing phenomenon, the experiments were carried out over a range of angles of attack from -8° to 22° at Reynolds number of 600000 on the clean airfoils, horn ice and spanwise ridge ice shape, and thereafter, the corresponding results were compared. According to the results, the icing phenomenon strongly affects the flow field around the iced airfoils, and it also has negative influence on the behavior of aerodynamic coefficients of the airfoil. Generally, it can be said that these two types of icing formation on the airfoil cause the formation of flow separation bubble on the upper surface at the downstream of the leading edge. In addition, it is found that the spanwise ridge ice has more negative effects on the aerodynamic parameters of the airfoil in comparison with the horn ice. In the case of spanwise ridge ice, ∝ stall and CL max decrease 8° and 50%, respectively, whereas, for the case of horn ice, these values reduce about 4° and 21%.