A Critical Point Analysis Procedure To Quickly Identify the Most Dangerous Flight Conditions for Aeronautical Probes Operating in Icing Conditions

The aim of this work is to propose a new approach for rapidly determining the flight conditions representing the highest icing risk for aeronautical probes. Such a tool is particularly useful during design phases, as it allows for the evaluation of probe reliability as well as the effectiveness of the associated protection system in operation. The approach presented here - known as CPA (Critical Point Analysis) - is the first step in a broader strategy for assessing the robustness of probes against the risk of icing. Its goal is to help design the test matrix used for wind tunnel experiments, by identifying the most severe flight conditions a probe can encounter in operation. Given its scope of use, it is essential that its implementation requires less than a day of computing time. To meet these challenges, the approach presented here is based on two complementary strategies: the first one focuses on developing a simplified model capable of capturing the overall aerothermal behavior of a probe in operation. Such a model will allow us to perform a simulation in just a few minutes. The second phase takes advantage of the speed of a simulation and couples it with an optimization process capable of exploring an entire flight domain. By combining these two tools, it is possible to identify the most severe flight conditions for a probe in only a few hours of computation time on a standard computer.