Icing airworthiness test on a newly developed civil turbo-shaft engine

In this paper, the icing airworthiness test is conducted independently. A newly developed civil turbo-shaft engine is taken as the verification platform. The technical problems such as development of icing spray system and simulation of cloud spray flowfield are solved. Icing tests in icing envelope conditions are completed by using the newly constructed icing test bench. The ice formation mechanism of the intake system is revealed. The ice morphology of the engine intake system is obtained, and the impact of the flight environment on ice morphology is analyzed. The changing rules of total pressure loss, compressor efficiency, gas turbine outlet temperature and other parameters are summarized. The test results show that icing mainly occurs in the intake mesh cover of the engine, and the icing type is mainly manifested as glaze ice and rime ice. There are various forms of ice morphology, and the rime ice covers a large area, with the maximum icing thickness up to 260 mm appearing at temperature −10 ℃, altitude 1.2 km, and velocity 280 km/h. Icing has a significant impact on engine performance. Due to icing, the total intake pressure loss coefficient of the engine reaches up to 13.3%, the compressor efficiency value decreases by up to 10.4%, the gas temperature at gas turbine outlet increases by 41 ℃ and the engine power decreases by 15.8% at temperature −30 ℃, altitude 6 km, and velocity 280 km/h. During the icing test, the engine does not show any abnormal phenomena such as stalling or flame-out, which fully verifies the stability and reliability of the engine under adverse icing conditions.