A lagrangean interactive interface to evaluate ice accretion modeling on a cylinder - a test case for icing modeling on wind turbine airfoils

In the context of global campaign to mitigate climate change effects, researches on wind turbines industry have known a constant growth during the last few years. Wind velocity is so important for wind turbine productivity and very significant wind resources are available in cold regions where icing effects are also significant. Ice accretion increases the risks of unbalanced mass resulting in losses of annual power production, in vibration problems and in security risks. This coincides with the most abundant days of wind in the year. At the WERL (Wind Energy Research Laboratory), in collaboration with the TechnoCentre Eolien and the AMIL (Anti-icing Materials International Laboratory), numerous studies have been conducted to avoid this problem. In this paper we made use of these studies to simulate a test case of icing around a cylinder as described in Lozowski et al. [1]. We emphasize on the fact that these studies cannot provide very accurate local results due to numerous simplifications. We, therefore, developed at the WERL an interactive interface to simulate the trajectory of water droplets in an airstream until collision on a cylinder. This interface is based on MS-Excel worksheets supported with VBA code (Visual Basic for Applications) using a fourth order Runge-Kutta resolution scheme. The interface provides flexibility to demonstrate various scenarios that can help to validate the subsequent evaluation of collection efficiency based on multiphase CFX simulation.