Icing Performance Degradation of an eVTOL Propeller at the NASA Glenn Icing Research Tunnel

In March 2023, a 10-day test entry was conducted at the NASA Glenn Icing Research Tunnel (IRT) to study ice accretion on an eVTOL propeller. The primary objective was to collect ice accretion data to support the development of NASA’s latest ice accretion solver, GlennICE. Various parametric sweeps of cloud and operating conditions were performed to evaluate the sensitivity of the parameters on the resulting ice accretion, the results of which have been published previously. A subsequent 5-day test entry was carried out in January 2024, focusing on gathering experimental data related to ice shedding and exploring conditional icing scaling methods for propellers. Throughout both test campaigns, propeller performance data was recorded in the form of torque rise over time. The purpose of this paper is to present a subset of the performance data acquired during these tests and provide a discussion of the key findings.