Observations on the Growth of Roughness Elements Into Icing Feathers
This work presents the results of an experiment conducted in the Icing Research Tunnel at NASA Glenn Research Center to understand the process by which icing feathers are formed in the initial stages of ice accretion formation on swept wings. Close-up photographic data were taken on an aluminum NACA 0012 swept wing tip airfoil. Two types of photographic data were obtained: time sequence close-up photographic data during the run and close-up photographic data of the ice accretion at the end of each run. Icing runs were conducted for short ice accretion times from 10 to 180 sec. The time sequence close-up photographic data was used to study the process frame by frame and to create movies of how the process developed. The movies confirmed that at glaze icing conditions in the attachment line area icing feathers develop from roughness elements. The close-up photographic data at the end of each run showed that roughness elements change into a pointed shape with an upstream facet and join on the side with other elements having the same change to form ridges with pointed shape and upstream facet. The ridges develop into feathers when the upstream facet grows away to form the stem of the feather. The ridges and their growth into feathers were observed to form the initial scallop tips present in complete scallops.