The occurrence of aircraft icing can significantly affect flight performance. One of the most important aspects in the study of anti-icing technology for aircraft is the distribution of overflow water. Owing to the external airflow pressure, shear stress, and surface tension, the water film breaks up to form steady rivulets. Experiments on NACA0012 airfoil surfaces were conducted based on an open straight-flow and low-speed wind tunnel. Simultaneously, an engineered three-dimensional rivulet model considering the surface roughness was established based on the energy-minimum principle. A comparison between the simulation and experimental results shows that the errors in the water film breakup location and the flow velocity of rivulets are less than 20%, and the errors in the spacing and width of rivulets are less than 40%. In addition, the effects of surface temperature and uniform roughness on water film breakup were investigated. Furthermore, the rivulet model was applied to the numerical calculation of the thermal performance of hot-air anti-icing systems. The simulations reveal that the uniform roughness of the wing surface causes the water film to break earlier. As the surface roughness increases, the thickness, spacing, and width of the rivulets increase, and the rivulet flow velocity decreases.

A tight-coupling heat transfer method is proposed in this paper for the analysis of the performance of the hot air ice protection system. The Eulerian method is used for the calculation of the local collection efficiency. The external heat transfer coefficient was computed using the boundary layer integrated method. The thermal conductivity within the wing skin and the internal heat transfer between the hot air flow and the skin were computed using the computational fluid dynamic method. At the same time, the external heat flux boundary condition and the surface temperature were updated automatically by user-defined function to drive the iteration of the tight-coupling heat transfer calculation. The surface temperature results in dry air condition are compared with flight test data and show agreement. The maximum temperature difference between the simulation and the test is 11.5 K. In addition, the method proposed in this paper is applied to the wing hot air ice protection system of a real aircraft in icing conditions. It is found that the surface temperature ranges from 3 to 30 ℃ under certain flight and icing conditions. Larger droplet diameter or larger liquid water content leads to more runback water which changes the surface temperature not much when the parameters of the bleeding air are the same.

A prediction method of surface temperature and runback ice for a three-dimensional hot air anti-icing system was proposed. Computational approach to realize this method was introduced. Both the external and internal flows were separately calculated, results of which were set as boundary conditions of heat conduction computation in airfoil skin. The results of external and internal flow calculations show that the effect of surface temperature on convective heat transfer coefficients and local droplet collection efficiency is negligible and the calculations can be decoupled. The prediction method based on heat flux was used to calculate surface temperature and runback ice results. The results show that, the effects of LWC and Mach number are much more significant than the effect of external flow temperature. The surface temperature at impinging interaction point is more sensitive to the change of external conditions than that at stagnation point. The surface temperature changes significantly with changing Mach number because both the mass rate of droplet and the impact limit are changed.

In order to support the future thermal control and energy conservation design for the Mars rover, numerical studies on natural convection in CO₂ enclosures on Mars’ surface were conducted for both horizontal and vertical enclosures. The parameters are as follows: the atmospheric pressure was 1000 Pa, the gravitational acceleration was 3.62 m/s², and the Prandtl number was 0.77. The heat flux, temperature, and velocity fields of the CO₂ enclosures were obtained with the aspect ratio ranging from 5.56 to 200 and the Grashof number ranging from 430 to 2.6 × 10⁴. It was found that natural convection formed more easily in the horizontal enclosures than that in the vertical enclosures when the enclosures had same thickness. With the increasing thickness of the enclosures, Rayleigh–Bénard convections formed in the horizontal enclosures, while only single-cell convections formed in the vertical enclosures. The heat flux through the horizontal enclosures was greater than that through the vertical enclosures with the same thickness when natural convection formed. The maximum difference between them reached 35.26%, which was illustrated by the field synergy principle. A hysteresis phenomenon of the natural convection dominating the heat transfer was found in the vertical enclosure on Mars’ surface. New values for the critical Grashof number and correlations for the average Nusselt number for both the horizontal and vertical CO₂ enclosures on Mars’ surface were also developed.

The accumulation of ice on the aero-engine inlet compromises engine safety. Traditional hot air anti-icing systems, which utilize bleed air, require substantial energy, decreasing engine performance and increasing emissions. Superhydrophobic materials have shown potential in reducing energy consumption when combined with these systems. Research indicates that superhydrophobic surfaces on stationary components significantly reduce anti-icing energy consumption by altering runback water flow behavior. However, for rotating aero-engine components, the effectiveness of superhydrophobic surfaces and the influence of surface wettability on runback water flow remain unclear due to centrifugal and Coriolis forces. This study investigates the runback water flow behavior on aero-engine rotating spinner surfaces with varying wettabilities in a straight-flow spray wind tunnel. The results demonstrated that centrifugal force reduces the amount of runback water on the rotating spinner compared to the stationary surface, forming rivulet flows deflected opposite to the direction of rotation. Furthermore, wettability significantly affects the flow characteristics of runback water on rotating surfaces. As the contact angle increases, the liquid water on the rotating spinner transitions from continuous film flow to rivulet and bead-like flows. Notably, the superhydrophobic surface prevents water adhesion, indicating its potential for anti-icing on rotating components. In addition, the interaction between rotational speed and surface wettability enhances the effects, with both increased rotational speed and larger contact angles contributing to higher liquid water flow velocities, promoting the rapid formation and detachment of rivulet and bead-like flows.