Constellation, le dépôt institutionnel de l'Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Résumé

During winter, the clear runway concept is crucial to airports for maintaining passenger and employee safety. Research can optimize de-icing product application rates, thereby reducing costs and environmental impact. Currently, three aerospace standards exist for evaluating the performance of runway de-icing products. These comparative tests—ice melting, ice undercutting, and ice penetration tests—are carried out jointly in a systematic way and indicate whether a runway de-icing product is effective in actively reducing the presence of ice. Here we present a numerical model for the ice penetration method, for fluid runway de-icing product, with the goal of deepening the knowledge in this field. We apply a series of laboratory-based tests to measure the performance of runway de-icing products, and develop a new model to analyze the behavior of each product. The principal observation is that the product is more effective at 1 min and effectiveness decreases following an inverse logarithmic curve trend to 30 min. Through modeling, we observe that the dominant mode of heat transfer is natural laminar convection, and the model predicts a uniform melt length for the entire tube section. Thus, simplified ice penetration modeling using AS6211 can acceptably predict the rate of ice penetration as a function of time (mm/min), with the modeling confirmed by our experimental results. The future application of our simplified model to other existing de-icing fluid characterization test methods could identify the effects of diluted or undiluted solid runway de-icing products on ice penetration rates and ultimately on spreading rates.