Atmospheric icing meteorological parameter study using field experiments and simulation

Abstract Atmospheric icing on ground structures is a concern from design, operation, and safety perspectives. Supercooled water droplets size and liquid water content (LWC) are important weather parameters to better understand the ice accretion physics on ground structures. Most existing studies are based on measurements at high altitude. The study is based on the field results of a specific event (from 9:30 to 22:27 h on October 29, 2022) in Arctic region of northern Norway. The data from this event are presented and used for analytical validation and simulation. Field measurements of different meteorological weather parameters including the droplet size and LWC are carried out leading to recording of resultant atmospheric ice load and intensity. A comprehensive study is also carried out to validate droplet collision efficiency and ice load using the existing analytical model ISO‐12494 and computational fluid dynamics (CFD)–based numerical simulations. Furthermore, the differences in icing simulation using parameters such as median volume diameter (MVD), Langmuir B –J as alternatives to the actual droplet size distribution (DSD) spectrum are also analyzed. The results show that under natural meteorological conditions, the characteristics of water DSD change in real time. Using MVD alone to calculate the water droplet collision efficiency on circular cylinders can lead to significant errors. Accurately selecting the Langmuir distribution as a substitute for the actual DSD can reduce simulation errors to within 5%. Compared to the analytical model, the numerical simulations result better reflects the collision characteristics of water droplets of different sizes on the cylindrical object.