Experiment study on icing and pressure characteristics of engine inlet

The process of engine intake icing is complex and it’s a significant threat to flight safety. The icing wind tunnel test is an important method of studying engine intake icing, and model scaling is one of the common problems faced in icing wind tunnel tests. The influence of different inflow velocities and flow mass on the pressure distribution characteristics of the engine inlet lip surface was studied by wind tunnel experiment. It was proposed that in order to ensure flow field similarity, the primary constraint for the similarity conversion of engine inlet lip icing tests is that the ratio of inflow velocity and the average inlet velocity of the inlet is the same. In order to study the effect of lip icing on the performance of the engine inlet, icing tests and pressure characteristics measurement tests before and after icing were conducted in 3m × 2m icing wind tunnel. The experimental results show that the repeatability of the 3m × 2m icing wind tunnel icing test is good, and the main ice shape characteristic deviation for a typical rime ice condition is less than 7%. After the lip of the engine inlet icing, the total pressure recovery coefficient decreases and the non-uniformity of total pressure increases. As the flow mass increases, the performance index of the engine inlet decreases more significantly.