Dynamics of an ice particle submerged in water #

Ellen Jolley, Frank T Smith

10:50 Wednesday in 3E11.

Part of the Applied fluid dynamics session.

Abstract #

The ice-in-water problem has many applications. It is particularly important in aircraft icing and in drone performance in cold climates. The problem concerns a form of dynamic fluid-body interaction: dFBI. There has been increasing interest in dFBI recently. Our concern is with dFBI for high flow rates and a thin body (ice particle). For high flow rates however a relatively heavy body is usually assumed, in contrast with the ice-in-water case where the body and fluid have similar densities (and in fact ice is slightly less dense than water). The novel aspect of the present contribution is that, because of the O(1) density ratio, the mass-acceleration-force balance governing the body movements is found to be dominated by the pressure force due to the fluid flow. That force has to be adjusted to be virtually zero by the evolving dFBI. Melting or freezing associated with the ice particle are taken to be sufficiently slow here that they can be ignored in the model. Our modelling assumptions allow the dynamics to be reduced to a system of nonlinear ODEs which we then analyse using a combination of asymptotic methods and numerical simulation, revealing a variety of behaviours of the particle.