Research Activities

Icing on airplanes, wind turbines, power lines or helicopters, which is caused by the impact of supercooled water droplets or ice crystals, is extremely safety-relevant for humans and technical equipment. The understanding of these complex processes and the subsequent further development of new mechanisms start with basic experimental tests and continue to the investigation of novel sophisticated ice protection systems. The generation of a in detail characterized and reproducible experimental test environment requires the use of various measurement techniques and integrates knowledge in the field of measurement and control technology, optics and electronics into our daily work.

In the long term, numerical simulations try to replace time-consuming experiments, e.g. in the development of ice protection systems for different technical systems. For their development, extensive knowledge in the field of code generation, execution of CFD calculations, as well as a deep understanding of the physical processes of the icing process are necessary. Therefore, another focus of our work is the investigation and modeling of individual phenomena, such as drop impact and code development based on Ansys FLUENT.