Numerical simulation of the performance of an engine nacelle hot-air anti-icing system

A three-dimensional numerical simulation method with internal-external tight coupled heat transfer is developed to analysis the performance of an engine nacelle hot-air anti-icing system. Effect of engine inlet air mass flow rate on the skin temperature is also analyzed. A three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) method is applied to attain the heat transfer coefficient on both side of skin, and an inverse distance weighting algorithm is presented for the interpolation of data exchange between internal and external meshes. The local water collection coefficient on the engine nacelle, the distribution of the surface temperature and the runback water mass flow rate on the surface are obtained to determine. The simulation results indicate that this anti-icing system meets the requirement, the skin temperature decreases and the runback water mass flow rate increases as the engine inlet air mass flow rate rising.