Experimental and Numerical Investigation of a Multifunctional CFRP towards Heat Convection under Aircraft Icing Conditions

A combined experimental and numerical approach for the analysis of convective heat transfer from a multifunctional flat plate specimen under aircraft icing conditions is presented. The experimental setup including a heat control and measurement system that is installed in a de-icing test bed. The ambient temperature (θa=[253,283]K), air velocity (va={0,15,30}ms), and angle of attack (α={10,30}∘) are varied, and their influence on heat transfer during local Joule heating is discussed. The numerical approach utilises the results to compute the convective heat transfer coefficients (HTC) based on Newton’s convective heat transfer condition. Results indicate that the numerical model represents the heat transfer behaviour with high accuracy. The HTC for free convection was found to hold h¯≈2.5Wm2K and h¯≈[10,40]Wm2K for forced convection conditions with minor scattering. The increase in HTC under forced convection conditions has a significant effect on the overall heat transfer behaviour, resulting in high temperature gradients within the material. The functional optimisation of multifunctional structures will benefit from including application related convection conditions, dealing with resulting temperature fields by structural design. It is expected that multifunctional structures for de-icing as well as for structural energy storage, morphing structures, or stiffness adaptive structures with similar material constituents will benefit from this recognition.