Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-17-2025

Abstract

We analyse the Messinger/Myers model by critically evaluating simplifying assumptions through a rigorous formulation of the rime ice accretion process. We explore the effects of both constant and variable ice density and thermal conductivity, along with the effects of sublimation from the ice surface. The effects of key factors such as droplet impact rate, ambient temperature relative to the freezing temperature and the temperature difference between the ambient air and the airfoil surface are examined. Under these varying conditions, the present rigorous formulation is used to assess the significance of unsteady effects, variable ice properties and sublimation. We observe that the Myers model performs remarkably well in certain icing situations and analyse the reasons for this strong performance. We also show that partially relaxing the model’s assumptions can lead to poorer performance. The Myers model can lead to overprediction of ice surface temperature and correspondingly underprediction of transition time under conditions of relatively weak sublimation and surface cooling. A modified Myers model is presented, which can be used to recover near-perfect results under widely varying icing conditions of relevance.

Comments

© 2025 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Publication Title

Philosophical Transactions A

DOI

10.1098/rsta.2024.0367

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