Influence of Spinner Shape on Droplet Impact over Rotating Spinners

Abstract

Droplet impact affects water collection, which is the key to investigating the icing process on an aero-engine spinner. Different from a stationary spinner, droplet impact is affected by Coriolis acceleration and centrifugal acceleration on rotating aero-engine spinners, showing different impact dynamics. Based on the Eulerian method, using the rotating coordinate system we numerically investigated droplet impact characteristics on three different shapes of aero-engine spinners using ANSYS Fluent. The results indicate that the impact area covered all the windward surface on the conical spinner, and only covered the windward surface prior to the impingement limit of the elliptical spinner and the coniptical spinner. The sensitivity of water collection to inflow velocity declined in the order of coniptical the spinner, the elliptical spinner, and the conical spinner. In addition, the elliptical region could effectively improve aerodynamic performance, as shown in a lower total pressure loss through the spinner. This work is relevant to the anti-icing system of a rotating aero-engine spinner.