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Aircraft Icing: Droplet Impingement & Ice Accretion

Interactive 3D simulation of supercooled droplets impacting a wing leading edge: Stokes-number droplet trajectories in potential flow, collection efficiency, and rime vs. glaze ice accretion from a simplified energy balance.

Aerospace Engineering & Orbital Mechanics3DAdvanced60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 2D version

This simulator tracks individual supercooled water droplets as they're carried around a wing leading edge (modeled as a cylinder in potential flow) and computes, from real droplet-inertia physics, which ones strike the surface, where, and how much ice they leave behind. Adjust airspeed, liquid water content, droplet size and ambient temperature to move between low-inertia droplets that mostly follow the air around the nose and high-inertia droplets that punch straight through and impact — and watch the accreted ice shift between compact white rime near the stagnation point and glassy glaze with runback "horns" further aft, exactly as it does on a real airframe in icing conditions.

⚙ Under the hood

Track supercooled droplets as inertia carries them across curving potential-flow streamlines to strike a wing leading edge, and watch the accreted ice shift between rounded rime and horned glaze depending on airspeed, liquid water content, droplet size and temperature.

aerodynamicsicingfluid-dynamicsaerospace-engineeringdroplet-physics

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install