Study of Icing Effects on Performance and Controllability of an Accident Aircraft

The activities at NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in support of a National Transportation Safety Board accident investigation are described. An icing research tunnel (IRT) test was conducted in January 1998. Most conditions for the test were based on raw and derived data from the flight data recorder recovered from the accident and on the current understanding of the meteorological conditions near the accident. Using a two-dimensional Navier-Stokes code, the flowfield and resultant lift and drag were calculated for the wing section with various ice shapes accreted in the IRT test. Before the final calculations could be performed extensive examinations of geometry smoothing and turbulence modeling were conducted