Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, (2023), 36(12): 214–230

Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics

& Beihang University
Chinese Journal of Aeronautics
cja@buaa.edu.cn
www.sciencedirect.com

Scallop ice shape characteristics of swept wing

based on large-scale icing wind tunnel experiment
Qiang WANG a,b,c, Ningli CHEN a,b, Yuanbo WANG d, Weihao LI a,b,
Yu LIU a,b, Xian YI a,b,c,*

a
Low Speed Aerodynamics Institute, China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center, Mianyang 621000, China
b
Anti/de-icing Key Laboratory of China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center, Mianyang 621000, China
c
Key Laboratory of Aerodynamics, Mianyang 621000, China
d
Design and Research Institute of AVIC Shaanxi Aircraft Industry Group, Hanzhong 723000, China

Received 13 December 2022; revised 2 January 2023; accepted 1 February 2023

Available online 28 July 2023

KEYWORDS Abstract Scallop ice is a special phenomenon that occurs during swept wing aircraft passing
Aircraft; through icing clouds. It poses a great challenge for the icing safety assessment that the complex scal-
Swept wings; lop ice shape feature and its mechanism are still unclear. In this work, a large-scale icing wind tunnel
Scallop ice; experiment of swept wing designed by NACA0012 airfoil is conducted in the Icing Wind Tunnel of
Icing wind tunnel experi- China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center. The detailed three-dimensional ice shapes
ment; under 0°, 15°, 30° and 45° swept angles are obtained by laser scanning technology. The experimental
Scallop ice geometric model results show that with the swept angle increasing from 0° to 45°, the 2D double ice horn structures
show certain spanwise variation, and finally transform into complete scallop ice with ice thickness
greatly enhanced in the stagnation line region. The empirical mode decomposition of the spanwise
ice curve captures the high-frequency fluctuation on the scallop ice caused by the small-scale rough-
ness element, while the trend with low frequency is not obvious. Based on the experimental data, a
new complete scallop ice geometric model, named 5Points-5Lines-2Arcs (5P-5L-2A) model, is pro-
posed, which can provide important basis for the quantitative description of complex scallop ice
shape.
Ó 2023 Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of Chinese Society of Aeronautics and
Astronautics. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction components, such as the wing, the control surfaces, the engine
and the sensors.1 Generally, the ice accreted on non-swept
When an aircraft passes through clouds containing super- wing may exhibit continuous Two-Dimensional (2D) features,
cooled water droplets, the icing may occur on different aircraft which can be described by the well-defined ice shape character-
istic parameters, e.g. the height and angle of ice horns, the min-
* Corresponding author at: Anti/de-icing Key Laboratory of China imum leading-edge ice thickness, etc.2 However, for swept
Aerodynamics Research and Development Center, Mianyang 621000, wing, the icing phenomenon is completely different and the
China. ice accretion may be discretely distributed on the wing surface,
E-mail address: yixian@cardc.cn (X. YI). showing highly Three-Dimensional (3D) complex geometric
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cja.2023.07.022
1000-9361 Ó 2023 Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Scallop ice shape characteristics of swept wing based on large-scale icing wind tunnel experiment
Fig. 1 Photos of typical scallop ice shapes obtained in Icing Wind Tunnel of CARDC.
characteristics. This special kind of ice shape is usually called
scallop ice or lobster tails ice. 3 Fig. 1 shows the typical scallop
ice shape photos obtained in the Icing Wind Tunnel (IWT) of
China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center
(CARDC).
To find out the geometric features and shed light on the
evolution mechanism of scallop ice, a large number of scholars
have carried out extensive research work. Von Glahn and
Gray et al. conducted early experimental observation of this
phenomenon based on NACA 63A-009 airfoil in 1954. They
found for the first time that when the swept angle increases
to 36° and 60°, the discontinuous ice accretion distribution
would appear on the airfoil surface.4 Vargas and Tsao further
investigated this kind of discontinuous ice by carrying out tests
on the NACA0012 back-swept wing in the Icing Research
Tunnel of NASA. Their testing result shows that ice feather
will form in the area far from the stagnation line at the initial
stage of swept wing icing, and then the ice feather will gradu-
ally evolve into scallop ice, where the heat transfer plays an
important role in the icing process.5–7 According to the dis-
tance from the occurrence position of scallop ice to the line
of stagnation, Vargas further proposed the concept of scallop
ice critical distance (dcr), and divided scallop ice into no scal-
lops, incomplete scallops (dcr > 0) and complete scallops
(dcr = 0). 8–9 Recently, Hobson et al. investigated the mecha-
nism of scallop ice formed on the ice-water interface that can
be commonly observed in sea ice, river ice, icebergs,10 etc. They
demonstrated that the scallop form of ice is caused by the self-
reinforcing feedback between the ice-interface geometry and
turbulent kinetic energy produced by shear flow. 11 Currently,
although some achievements have been made in the study of
scallop ice mechanism, the detailed geometric characteristics
of scallop ice are still unknown.
According to the requirement of airworthiness, e.g. FAR 25
of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) 12 and CS-25 of
European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), 13 the aerody-
namic influence of ice accretion is needed to be comprehen-
sively evaluated. For swept wing aircraft, to find the accurate
scallop ice shape is a prerequisite for the aerodynamic analysis.
However, at present, it is still very difficult to obtain high-
precision scallop ice shape through numerical calculation or
215
flight test in natural icing environment. In the field of icing
numerical calculation, although different scallop ice computa-
tional model has been proposed, such as the Hedde and Guf-
fond two-stage icing model 14 and NASA LEWICE infinite
swept wing model, 15 there are still large discrepancies between
the results of icing numerical simulation and icing wind tunnel
experiment. 16–17 On the other hand, flight tests of scallop ice
have been carried out either by the DeHavilland DHC-6 Twin
Otter aircraft of NASA 18 or by MRJ-200 aircraft of Mit-
subishi Aircraft Corporation America. 19 But since the
accreted scallop ice is hard to be measured in details, the scal-
lop ice formed in natural icing environment is investigated
mainly based on qualitative observation.
In contrast, the wind tunnel test provides an important
method for the research of icing on the swept wing. Recently,
in order to respond to the challenge of swept wing icing,
NASA, FAA, Office National d’Etudes et Recherches
Aérospatiales (ONERA), Universities of Illinois, Virginia
and Washington, the Boeing Company, etc. have jointly
launched a seven-phase research program on ice formation
and its aerodynamic effects on swept wings. 20–22 Based on
the swept wing of 65% scaled Common Research Model
(CRM), the icing wind tunnel experiments were carried out
in the IRT of NASA. 23 Then the aerodynamic influence wind
tunnel experiments were conducted in the Walter H. Beech
Memorial Wind Tunnel of Wichita State University24,25 and
the F1 pressured wind tunnel of ONERA. 26 The research
results show that from the perspective of aerodynamic influ-
ence, the high-fidelity 3D scallop ice cannot be simply replaced
by the smoothed or simplified ice shapes, due to the special
flow phenomenon caused by the discrete scallop ice. On one
hand, the high-fidelity 3D scallop ice will result in leading-
edge vortexes along the streamwise direction (defined as Type
II flow field), which can cause the leading-edge suction peak to
decrease before stall, thus leading to the reduction of lift. On
the other hand, at high angles of attack, these vortexes can
lead to stall delay effect. 27,28 The similar aerodynamic phe-
nomenon has also been reported by Wu et al. In their research
work, the ice shape with spanwise variation is achieved by dis-
continuous distributed plasma actuators29 and the streamwise
flow vortexes are found in the non-icing area, which can pro-
216 Q. WANG et al.

mote the flow field mixing effect and result in stall delay. 30
Therefore, it is of great significance to carry out a detailed
study of the scallop ice geometric features quantitatively.
To this end, in this paper, the scallop ice shape character-
istics of a swept wind model designed by NACA0012 airfoil
are studied, based on the icing wind tunnel experiment carried
out in the IWT of CARDC. In the following content, first, the
wind tunnel icing tests are introduced and then the obtained
ice shapes are analyzed in detail by cutting the 3D ice shapes
into different slices. After that, a new scallop ice model,
named 5P-5L-2A model, is proposed and the related charac-
teristic parameters are analyzed. Finally, the conclusions are
drawn.
2. Large-scale icing wind tunnel experiment of CARDC standard
swept wing model
2.1. Icing wind tunnel of CARDC
The Icing Wind Tunnel (IWT) of CARDC, established in
2012, is a large-scale closed-loop icing wind tunnel, which is
one of the major national scientific and technological facilities
of China. The IWT of CARDC, together with NASA Glenn
Icing Research Tunnel (IRT) 31 and CIRA Icing Wind Tunnel
(IWT), 32 is the largest three engineering icing wind tunnels in
the world. The schematic diagram of the tunnel is shown in
Fig. 2.
To simulate the natural cloudy icing environment of air-
craft with low temperature and low pressure, the facility is
equipped with a large number of systems, including the refrig-
eration system, the altitude simulation system, the spray sys-
tem, etc. In refrigeration system, the liquid ammonia is used
as the refrigeration medium, and the temperature in the tunnel
can be controlled through the heat exchange between the air-
flow and the evaporator. The static temperature can be cooled
down to
40 °C. The low-pressure conditions at high altitude
(from 0 to 20 km) can be simulated by the altitude simulation
system, which adjusts the altitude by controlling the pressure
in the tunnel. The spray system, containing 1000 nozzles, is
located in front of the test section. Based on this system, the
water droplets with specified particle size distribution can be
ejected. As a result, the Liquid Water Content (LWC)
and Median Volume Diameter (MVD) with the range of
0.2–3 g/m3 and 10–300 lm respectively can be simulated.
Besides, The IWT of CARDC has three replaceable test sec-
tions, namely the main test section, the secondary test section
and the high-speed test section. The size of the main test sec-
tion is 2 m (height)  3 m (width), while that of the secondary
section and high-speed section is 3.2 m (height)  4.8 m
(width) and 1.5 m (height)  2 m (width) respectively. The
detailed icing simulation parameters of the IWT of CARDC
can be found in Table 1.
According to the SAE ARP5905 standard, 33 a comprehen-
sive calibration of the facility has been carried out 34 and the

Fig. 2 Schematic diagram of CARDC IWT.

Table 1 Icing parameter simulation capability of CARDC IWT.

Content Main section Second section High-speed section
Dimension 3 m  2 m  6.5 m 4.8 m  3.2 m  9 m 2 m  1.5 m  4.5 m
Wind speed 21–210 m/s 8–78 m/s 26–256 m/s
Temperature Range local temperature 
40 °C
Uniformity 1 °C
Precision ±0.5 °C
Humidity Range 70%–100% (
15 °C to
20 °C);
100% (
20 °C to
40 °C)
Precision ±5%
Altitude Icing test 0–7 km
High-altitude test 0–20 km
Cloud parameters LWC 0.2–3 g/m3
MVD 10–300 lm
Uniformity 60% of test sectional area
Scallop ice shape characteristics of swept wing based on large-scale icing wind tunnel experiment 217

Fig. 3 Standard swept wing model of CARDC designed by NACA0012 airfoil.

results demonstrate that the icing atmospheric simulation
capability of IWT of CARDC can cover most of the condi-
tions listed in Appendix C, Part 25 of FAR. 12 The swept wing
icing wind tunnel experiment is conducted in the main test
section.
2.2. Standard swept wing model of CARDC
To study the swept wing icing phenomenon, a standard swept
wing model is designed by CARDC based on the NACA0012
airfoil, as shown in Fig. 3. The chord length of the model is
0.78 m and the span length is 1.75 m. Compared with the
NASA standard swept wing model, 16 the model of CARDC
has the following features: (A) the aspect ratio of the CARDC
swept wing model (about 2.24) is larger; (B) the variation of
the swept angle is achieved by assembling different angle
blocks, so that the swept angle can be changed from 0° to
60° with an interval of 15°; (C) the span length at leading-
edge position of CARDC swept wing model can be kept con-
stant under different swept angles; (D) a special base with the
height of 0.12 m is designed to support the whole model, which
can be used to reduce the boundary layer influence of the tun-
nel wall. The whole model is made of aluminum alloy.
2.3. Icing wind tunnel experimental process
Generally, the scallop ice is formed in glaze icing environment.
Thus in order to capture the characteristics of complex scallop
ice, a typical glaze icing condition (V ¼ 67:1 m=s, Ts ¼
7 C,
LWC ¼ 1:0 g=m3 , MVD ¼ 20 lm, t ¼ 29 min) is selected and
the icing experiment is carried out under four swept angles (0°,
15°, 30° and 45°). To avoid the influence of inflow direction,
the inflow Angle of Attack (AoA) is fixed as 0° for all cases.
The detailed test conditions are listed in Table 2.
The icing wind tunnel test process is given as follows.
Firstly, both of the power and refrigeration systems are
started. The power system can quickly provide a stable flow
field while the refrigeration system will cool the wind tunnel
airflow with a certain lag. Secondly, when the temperature in
the test section reaches the stable value as designed, the spray
system is started and meanwhile the high-resolution video sys-
tem was used to record the following icing process on the sur-
face of the model. Thirdly, when the icing time is reached, the
spray system is stopped immediately. At the same time, the
power system stops working. If the airflow speed in the tunnel
reduces to zero, the ice formation on the swept wing will be
recorded by photos and ice shapes will be measured by
ROMER absolute joint arm in details, which is a non-
contact laser scanning system with the measurement accuracy
of 1.2 lm. The similar ice shape measurement method has also
been developed in NASA IRT. 35 Considering the limitation of
the scanning range, only the ice accretion in the middle part of
the model is scanned, except Case IV in which the ice shape
along all the span length is measured. The detailed scan ranges
are listed in the last column of Table 2.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Ice shape results based on qualitative observation
Fig. 4 shows the experimental ice shape photos from Case I to
Case IV. It can be seen that the ice shapes of 0° and 15° swept

Table 2 Conditions of icing wind tunnel experiment carried out in IWT of CARDC.
Case No. f Ts Tt MVD LWC V t a Scan range (m)
（°） （°C） （°C） （lm） （g/m3） （m/s） （min） （°）
I 0
7.00
4.76 20 1.0 67.1 29 0 0.51–1.01
II 15
7.00
4.76 20 1.0 67.1 29 0 0.45–1.05
III 30
7.00
4.76 20 1.0 67.1 29 0 0.53–1.20
IV 45
7.00
4.76 20 1.0 67.1 29 0 0–1.62
218
Fig. 4 Experimental photos of swept wing ice shape.
angles exhibit significant glaze icing features, e.g. the relative
thin and transparent ice at the stagnation line, the double ice
horn shape, etc. However, under 15° swept angle condition,
certain disturbance along the span direction occurs at the
edges of ice horn. Specifically, there are separate small-scale
ice horn structures existing on the two ice horns, which have
3D characteristics. According to the scallop ice classification
defined by Vargas, 36 this kind of ice is incomplete scallop
ice with an obvious uniform critical distance. When the swept
angle further increases to 30°, the ice shape is completely dif-
ferent. The double ice horn feature disappears. Instead, the dis-
crete scallop type ice is covered on the leading edge of the
model. Because the critical distance on the ice cannot be distin-
guished anymore, the ice of 30° swept angle belongs to com-
plete scallop ice. The ice shape of 45° swept angle also shows
dramatically complete scallop ice feature, but the spanwise
spacing between scallops is significantly increased.
In Fig. 5, the detailed features of the scallop ice under 45°
swept angle are illustrated. We can see that even in the main
body of the scallop ice, the feather ice with relatively indepen-
dent structure can be clearly seen on the upwind side. Mean-
while, at limiting position of scallop ice, there are also small-
scale ice feathers on the surface of the model pointing to the
incoming flow direction. It should be noticed that generally
the whole surface of the scallop ice is covered with roughness
elements with different scales. Besides, the tip of the scallop ice
is more transparent.
Q. WANG et al.
The corresponding 3D ice shape comparison based on laser
scan results is illustrated in Fig. 6. It can be seen from the fig-
ure that the scallop ice generally deflects towards the airflow
direction, which is consistent with the findings of Vargas. 36
The detailed ice shape feature will be discussed in detail in
the following content.
3.2. Scallop ice shape quantitative analysis based on 3D laser
scan results
Before analyzing the scallop ice shapes quantitatively, the
swept wing coordinate system is defined as shown in Fig. 7,
where the origin is located at the leading edge of the bottom
airfoil section and the Z axis is parallel to the leading edge
of the swept wing model. The X axis is perpendicular to the
leading-edge line of the swept wing, pointing from the
leading-edge point to the trailing-edge point. The Y axis is
defined so that the X, Y, Z axis constitute an orthogonal coor-
dinate system. Based on the swept wing coordinate system, the
ice shapes under different swept angles are comparable.
In the following content, the complex 3D scallop ice accre-
tion obtained by 3D laser scan will be analyzed in different cut-
ting planes normal to the Z, Y and X axes respectively, as
shown in Fig. 8. It should be mentioned that in the following
discussion, all ice shape data are dimensionless based on the
characteristic chord length of 0.78 m.
Scallop ice shape characteristics of swept wing based on large-scale icing wind tunnel experiment 219

Fig. 5 Detailed features of scallop ice under 45° swept angle condition.

Fig. 6 Comparison of scallop ice shapes among different swept angles.

3.2.1. Analysis of scallop ice shape characteristics in planes
normal to Z axis
Firstly, the ice shape in the planes normal to Z axis is analyzed.
Previously, NASA IRT has proposed an approach, named
Maximum Combined Cross Section (MCCS) method, to find
the 2D characteristic ice shape outline of 3D complex scallop
ice. In MCCS method, a set of planes normal to Z axis is
defined and the corresponding 2D ice shapes in the planes
are obtained. Then all these 2D ice shape curves are projected
to one characteristic plane, and the maximum contour curve in
this plane can be extracted. 37 Although in terms of the ice vol-
ume, the ice shape obtained by utilizing of MCCS method may
be conservative, the aerodynamic influence may be completely
different. As mentioned before, scholars have demonstrated
that the streamwise vortexes caused by the high-fidelity scallop
structures cannot be captured by the smoothed ice shape mod-
els. 27–28 Thus, it is of great significance to carry out indepen-
dent analysis on ice shapes in different sections.
Fig. 9 shows the comparison of ice shapes formed under
different swept angles in the planes with Z values from 0.705
to 1.282. For the ice shape of 0° swept angle, except the double
ice horn feature, a small bulge about 0.04 m high exists in the
stagnation line region. When the swept angle increases to 15°,
the ice thickness at the stagnation point is nearly unchanged;
however, the ice valleys between the stagnation line and the
ice horns are filled. At the same time, the height of the ice
horns grows rapidly. The corresponding ice shape details can
be found in Fig. 10. When the swept angle further increases
220
Fig. 7 Definition of swetp wing coordinates.
to 30° and 45°, the ice shape in some sections no longer keeps
continuous, but presents multi-connected domain
characteristics.
Another important ice shape feature under large swept
angles is that the ice thickness at stagnation line increases sig-
nificantly. This is consistent with the experimental results of
Bidwell. 16 However, this phenomenon cannot be explained
by current icing similarity theory of swept wing. As pointed
by Tsao, compared with the non-swept condition, the collec-
tion coefficient at the stagnation point of swept wing is propor-
tional to cos(f) and the convective heat transfer is proportional
to cos(f)1/2, in which f is the swept angle. 37 It implies that the
larger the swept angle, the smaller the ice thickness at the stag-
nation point.
Bidwell attributed the inconsistency between the experi-
mental results and the icing similarity theory to the following
aspects: (A) The icing similarity of swept wing is usually based
on the theory of infinite swept wing, so the influence of span-
wise flow component is not considered. (B) During the icing
process, the rough element will significantly enhance the con-
vection heat transfer process in the stagnation region, while
Fig. 8 Definition of ice shape cut planes.
Q. WANG et al.
in the theoretical analysis the rough element influence is
ignored. (C) Large-scale scallop ice structure will cause fluid
disturbance to further strengthen the heat transfer process. 16
Except the above factors, the authors speculate that the behav-
ior of the water film transportation may be also an important
issue to explain this phenomenon. With the increase of the
swept angle, the spanwise component of water film flow
becomes larger, because the wind shear is the main driving
force of water film movement. 38 When the spanwise water film
flows over the roughness element scattered on the surface, a
certain quality of water will be frozen by the enhanced convec-
tion heat transfer effect on the top of the roughness element,
and the rest will continue to flow. This theory can be also used
to explain the increased ice thickness on the upwind surface
when the swept angle increases from 0° to 15° as shown in
Fig. 9, since the spanwise transportation of water film is the
most important source contributing to the growth of ice.
Considering that the ice horn formation usually plays an
important role in determining the aerodynamic influence, the
height of ice horn in the planes normal to Z axis is analyzed.
Generally, the ice height is defined as the normal distance from
the ice point to the surface of the clear model. Fig. 11 illus-
trates the distribution of the ice horn height in the same cutting
planes of Fig. 9. Besides, the fitting results of these discrete ice
height results are also included. It can be seen from the figure
that in general, the ice horn thickness increases with the swept
angle, and when the swept angle increases to a certain value,
the rising trend gradually slows down. In addition, the increase
of ice horn height in the spanwise direction (Z) is not obvious.
3.2.2. Analysis of scallop ice shape characteristics in planes
normal to Y axis
To quantitatively study the variation of ice accretion on the
swept wing along the span direction, the ice shapes in the
planes normal to Y axis with Y values from
0.036 to 0.036
are extracted, as shown in Fig. 12. It can be found out that
in some cutting planes, there are two separated ice shape
curves at the same time, because the cutting plane passes
through the ice accretion with certain thickness. The upper
Scallop ice shape characteristics of swept wing based on large-scale icing wind tunnel experiment 221

Fig. 9 Ice shape comparison among different Z = const planes of Cases I, II, III and IV.

ice shape curve corresponds to the ice shape in the upwind By comparing the ice shape curves at 0° (Case I) and 15°
direction, while the lower one is on the leeward side. (Case II) swept angles, it can be found out that in the stagna-
222
Fig. 10 Comparison of ice shape details in stagnation line region between Case I and Case II.
Fig. 11 Distritbution of ice horn thickness in planes normal to Z axis and correspongding surface fitting results.
tion line section (Y = 0), the difference of two ice curves is
small, but in the planes of Y=±0.018 and Y=±0.036, the
discrepancy of the upwind ice curve is significant. Besides, it
should be noticed that the spanwise ice shapes in all the planes
are fluctuating. A significant trend is that the farther away
from the stagnation line the position on the model surface,
the lower the frequency of the fluctuations.
When the swept angle increases to 30°, the amplitude of the
upwind ice shape fluctuation increases significantly. In some
planes, e.g. in Y = 0.036 plane, the continuous characteristics
of ice shape curve can no longer be maintained. Under 45°
swept angle condition, this trend is further enhanced. As seen
in Y = 0.036 plane, there are a lot of separate ice structures in
this section. Besides, it can be also seen that, for the ice shape
curve of 45°swept angles in Y = 0 plane, a large ice peak is
usually accompanied by an ice valley to a certain degree.
The corresponding scallop ice shape details of 30° and 45°
swept angles can be found in Fig. 13. This is probably due
to the coupling effect of the water droplet shielding and con-
vective heat transfer enhancement when the discrete scallop
ice exists. The similar analysis has also been reported by Hedde
and Guffond. 39 They believed that the growth of scallop ice
can be divided into two stages, namely the initial stage and
macroscopic growth stage. In the first stage, the water droplet
may mainly impinge on the front side of the hummock formed
by previously frozen water droplet, thus leading to the water
Q. WANG et al.
droplet shade effect. In the second stage, the convective heat
transfer on the top of scallop ice increases significantly while
in the ice valley that is decreased dramatically.
Fig. 14 shows the average value and the corresponding vari-
ance of the ice thickness along Z axis. At Y =
0.018 and
Y = 0 planes, the averaged ice thickness goes up with the
increase of sweep angle, but the situation is different in
Y = 0.018 plane in which the ice shape heights of 30° and
45° swept angles are close. For the fluctuation characteristics
of ice shape, the variance of the ice shapes of 0° and 15° swept
angles is maintained at a low level about 6% in Y = 0 plane,
but increases in the planes with Y=±0.018. However, when
scallop ice occurs at 30° and 45° swept angles, not all the vari-
ance of ice shapes in the section deviating from the stagnation
point is increased.
In order to further extract the characteristics of ice shape
fluctuation at different swept angles, the spanwise ice curve
on the upwind side was analyzed based on Empirical Mode
Decomposition (EMD). The EMD method is a wave signal
processing technology proposed by Huang et al. in 1998. 40
Compared with the Fourier transform, wavelet transform
and other fluctuation analysis methods, the EMD method
can decompose nonlinear and non-stationary signals into a
series of Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMF) and an additional
residual term (also called trend) based on the characteristics
of the signal itself. 41 At the same time, the method combined
Scallop ice shape characteristics of swept wing based on large-scale icing wind tunnel experiment 223

Fig. 12 Ice shape comparison in planes normal to Y axis of Cases I, II, III and IV.

with Hilbert transform can effectively calculate the instanta-
neous frequency and amplitude of complex signals, so this pro-
cess is also called Hilbert Huang Transform (HHT). 42 The
detailed decomposition process of EMD can be found in
Ref. 43.
Fig. 15 shows the results of EMD computation. In each
sub-figure, the original ice shape curves, the first four order
IMFs and trend of the original ice shape curves are included.
It can be seen in the first IMF curve that the ice shape signals
with high frequency can be found in different span positions,
which is caused by the small-scale rough element scattered
on the surface. However, it should be noticed that there are
always areas where high-frequency signals disappear, which
demonstrates the complexity of the roughness of scallop ice.
224
Fig. 13 Photos of scallop ice shape details formed at 30° and 45° swept angles.
Fig. 14 Comparison of ice thickness and variation in the planes normal to Y axis.
In addition, by comparison of the residual terms, it can be
found out that the trend of the scallop ice with low-
frequency fluctuation is not obvious.
3.2.3. Analysis of scallop ice shape characteristics in the planes
normal to X axis
The ice shape curves in the planes normal to X axis can reflect
the evolution history of ice accretion to some extent. In this
section, the ice shape characteristics in the planes normal to
X axis will be discussed. Fig. 16 illustrates the ice shape com-
parison of X = 0.0, X =
0.016, X =
0.032, X =
0.048
and X =
0.064 planes. It should be noticed that the negative
X value means that the ice is growing in the direction of incom-
ing flow.
It can be seen from the comparison of ice curves in X = 0
plane that the width between the left and right ice boundaries
in the initial ice growing stage narrows with the increase of
swept angle. This phenomenon can be explained as follows.
On one hand, according to the icing scaling theory of swept
Q. WANG et al.
wing, 37 the larger the swept angle, the smaller the water collec-
tion coefficient. On the other hand, under larger swept angle
condition, the airflow and water film component in the chord-
wise direction is reduced, which may weaken the chordwise
transportation of the liquid water and can lead to the narrow
ice width. When X value changes from 0.0 to
0.016, the width
of the ice boundary for all the swept angles increases dramat-
ically. However, this trend no longer holds for the ice of 0° and
15° swept angles when X value reaches
0.048. By comparing
the ice curves in X =
0.032 and X =
0.048 planes, it can be
seen that the ice accreted at 30° and 45° swept angle continues
to grow in the width direction, while the width increase of 0°
and 15° swept angles is not obvious. Besides, there is another
important feature for the ice accretion of 15° swept angle that
where there is a large separate ice horn along the span direc-
tion, the width growth trend is still significant. The discrete
ice horn feature of ice shape formed at 15° swept angle is illus-
trated in Fig. 17. This phenomenon is probably due to the fact
that near the ice horn region the spanwise flow component can
Scallop ice shape characteristics of swept wing based on large-scale icing wind tunnel experiment 225

Fig. 15 Empirical mode decomposition of spanwise ice thickness in the planes normal to Y axis. The curves from top to bottom are the
original spanwise ice thickness, the 1st-4th intrinsic mode functions and the trend item.

be taken as a certain kind of disturbance factors, which may
disrupt the evenly distributed 2D growth of the ice along the
span. Once a discrete ice horn structure is formed, its water
collection capability and convective heat transfer will be fur-
ther enhanced, which can promote the width growth trend of
local ice. This law is also applicable to the growth of the com-
plete scallop ice. As shown in Fig. 16, the ice comparison in
X =
0.048 and X =
0.064 planes demonstrates that once
the complete scallop ice is formed, the width increase trend will
be continuously kept as icing time increases, which may due to
the larger water capture capability of scallop ice.
To summarize, the ice shape results in the planes normal to
X axis demonstrate that the width increase trend of swept wing
ice accretion has close relationship with the separate 3D ice
226 Q. WANG et al.

Fig. 16 Ice shape comparison in the planes normal to X axis.

Scallop ice shape characteristics of swept wing based on large-scale icing wind tunnel experiment
Fig. 17 Discrete ice horn feature of ice shape formed at 15° swept angle.
horn structures. Compared with the ice of smaller swept angle,
the more significant the dispersion degree of the scallop ice is,
the more dramatically the ice expands away from the stagna-
tion line.
3.3. 3D geometric characteristic parameter analysis based on a
new scallop ice model
3.3.1. 5Points-5Lines-2Arcs (5P-5L-2A) scallop ice model
For 2D glaze ice shape, eight characteristic parameters have
been proposed in Ref. 44, including the heights and angles of
the up and down ice horns, the icing limitations of up and
down ice accretion, the minimum ice thickness of the leading
edge and the total ice area. In recent years, Bragg et al. summa-
rized the aerodynamic characteristics of highly 3D leading-
edge horn ice and pointed out that the key parameters are
the height, location, angle of the spanwise averaged ice horn,
the spanwise variation of horn geometry, and roughness. 45
However, to the authors’ knowledge, there is still no geometric
characteristic model for describing the common scallop ice fea-
tures so far.
In this paper, based on the geometry measurement of single
scallop ice shape by utilizing 3D laser scanning technology, a
new geometric characteristic model of complete scallop ice,
namely, the 5Points-5Lines-2Arcs (5P-5L-2A) geometric
model, is proposed, as shown in Fig. 18. In the model, five
points are selected to define the characteristic positions of
the scallop outline, in which P2 and P3 are the top points of
scallop ice horn with the maximum distance to the clear model
surface; P1 is the midpoint of the line connecting the projection
points of P2 and P3 to the stagnation line; P4 and P5 are the
interaction points between the inflow plane (formed by the
Fig. 18 Diagrammatic sketch of 5P-5L-2A mode.
227
incoming flow vector and the leading-edge line of the swept
wing) and the profiles of the scallop ice boundary in the lee-
ward and windward directions. Then five lines can be used
to describe the characteristic length of scallop ice, in which
line1 (connecting P1 and P2) and line2 (connecting P1 and
P3) are the heights of scallop ice horns; line3 (connecting P1
and P4) and line4 (connecting P1 and P5) are the characteristic
ice thickness in stagnation region; line5 (connecting P4 and P5)
is the width of the scallop ice top surface. Meanwhile, two
characteristic arcs (arc1 and arc2) can be calculated by points
P2, P5, P3 and P2, P4, P3, which represent the bending degree
of scallop ice in the direction of incoming flow. Besides, three
characteristic angles can be also obtained, in which h1 and h2
are the angles between the inflow plane and line1 and line2;
h3 is angle between line3 and line4. The 5P-5L-2A scallop ice
model can cover most of the characteristic parameters pro-
posed by Bragg. In the following content, the 5P-5L-2A scal-
lop ice model will be applied in the analysis of the complete
scallop ice shape of Case III and Case IV.
3.3.2. Analysis of scallop ice characteristic parameters of 30°
and 45° swept angles using 5P-5L-2A model
The distribution of scallop ice horn heights (line1 and line2)
along the Z axis under the conditions of 30° and 45° swept
angles is illustrated in Fig. 19. As can be seen in the figure,
both of line1 and line2 are fluctuated dramatically, which indi-
cates that the growth of the scallop ice horn is different along
the span direction of swept wing. The evolution process of
each scallop ice is probably affected by the adjacent scallop
ice structures. Generally, the distribution range of Case III is
within ð0:075; 0:095Þ while that of Case IV is ð0:07; 0:10Þ. So,
the height variation of scallop ice horn is more significant at
228 Q. WANG et al.

Fig. 19 Comparison of 3D scallop ice horn height.

larger swept wing angles, which is consistent with the results
obtained by 2D cutting plane analysis. Besides, from the
results of linear fitting, it can be seen that the height of ice horn
increases along the span.
The corresponding distribution of h1 , h2 and h3 is shown in
Fig. 20. It can be seen from the figure that the swept angle has
little influence on the average scallop ice horn angle. When
the swept angle increases from 30° to 45°, h1 is reduced only
by 2.8% while h2 increases by 5.9%. The change of h3 is
similar.
Fig. 21 shows the comparison of the curvature radius of
arc1 and arc2. According to the definition, the smaller the cur-
vature radius of arc1 and arc2, the larger the bending degree of
scallop ice. For 30° swept angle condition, the large bending of
scallop ice occurs around Z = 0.8 and Z = 1.1. However, for
45° swept angle condition, the bending law of scallop ice is not
obvious. Besides, it is interesting to find out that the curvature
radius difference of arc1 and arc2 under 45° swept angle con-
dition is more significant, meaning that larger swept angle may
result in relatively wider scallop top surface.

Fig. 20 Comparison of 3D scallop ice horn angle.

Fig. 21 Comparison of arc radius of 3D scallop ice shape.

Scallop ice shape characteristics of swept wing based on large-scale icing wind tunnel experiment
4. Conclusions
In order to investigate the complex scallop ice shape character-
istics of swept wing, a large-scale icing wind tunnel experiment
has been carried out in the IWT of CARDC. The detailed ice
shape is obtained by laser scanning technology. Based on the
ice shape analysis, the following conclusions can be drawn:
(1) As the swept angle increases from 0° to 45°, the 2D dou-
ble ice horn structure gradually evolves with certain
spanwise variation of ice horn, and finally transforms
into complete scallop ice. Compared with the ice shape
of small swept angle, the ice thickness of 30° and 45°
swept angles in the stagnation line region increase
significantly.
(2) The spanwise fluctuation of ice shape occurs for all
swept angle conditions, which is magnified at larger
sweep angles. The EMD analysis of the wave character-
istics of ice shape demonstrates that there are high-
frequency fluctuations on the scallop ice caused by the
small-scale roughness element, while the trend with
low frequency is not obvious.
(3) The 3D ice horn structures play an important role in the
width increase of ice evolutionary process. The more sig-
nificant the dispersion degree of the scallop ice, the more
dramatically the ice expands away from the stagnation
line.
(4) A new scallop ice model, named 5P-5L-2A, is proposed
and the characteristic parameter analyses show that the
distribution of scallop ice horn height is influenced by
the swept angle dramatically while the angle of the scal-
lop ice horn is less affected.
(5) The findings in this paper may lay a foundation to shed
light on the mechanism of this special icing phe-
nomenon. Meanwhile, the detailed geometric data of
complex scallop ice can provide important support for
validating the icing computational model of swept wing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This study was co-supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Nos. 12172372 and 12132019) and the
National Major Science and Technology Projects of China
(No. J2019-III-0010-0054).
References
1. Cebeci T, Kafyeke F. Aircraft icing. Annu Rev Fluid Mech
2003;35:11–21.
2. Bragg MB, Broeren AP, Blumenthal LA. Iced-airfoil aerodynam-
ics. Prog Aerosp Sci 2005;41(5):323–62.
3. Vargas M, Reshotko E. Physical mechanisms of glaze ice scallop
formations on swept wings. Proceedings of the 36th AIAA
aerospace sciences meeting and exhibit. Reston: AIAA; 1998.
229
4. Von Glahn UH, Gray VH. Effect of ice formations on section
drag of swept NACA 63A-009 airfoil with partial-span leading–
edge slat for various modes of thermal ice protection. Washington
D.C.: NACA; 1954. Report No.: NACA RM E53J30.
5. Vargas M, Tsao JC. Time-sequence observations of the formation
of ice accretions on swept wings. Proceedings of the 46th AIAA
aerospace sciences meeting and exhibit. Reston: AIAA; 2008.
6. Vargas M, Tsao JC. Observations on the growth of roughness
elements into icing feathers. Proceedings of the 45th AIAA
aerospace sciences meeting and exhibit. Reston: AIAA; 2007.
7. Vargas M, Tsao JC, Rothmayer A. Review of role of icing feathers
in ice accretion formation. SAE technical paper series. Warrendale:
SAE International; 2007.
8. Vargas M. Ice accretion on swept wings at glaze ice conditions
[dissertation]. Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University; 1998.
9. Vargas M, Reshotko E. Parametric experimental study of the
formation of glaze ice shapes on swept wings. Proceedings of the
37th aerospace sciences meeting and exhibit. Reston: AIAA; 1999.
10. Hobson BW, Sherman AD, McGill PR. Imaging and sampling
beneath free-drifting icebergs with a remotely operated vehicle.
Deep Sea Res Part II 2011;58(11–12):1311–7.
11. Bushuk M, Holland DM, Stanton TP, et al. Ice scallops: A
laboratory investigation of the ice–water interface. J Fluid Mech
2019;873:942–76.
12. Jeck R. Icing design envelopes (14 CFR parts 25 and 29,
appenddix C) converted to a distance-based format. 2002. Wash-
ington, D.C.: Federal Aviation Administration; Report No.:
DOT/FAA/AR-00/30.
13. European Aviation Safety Agency. Certifcation specifcations and
acceptable means of compliance for large aeroplanes. 2017.
Standard No.: CS-25 Amendment 19.
14. Hedde T, Guffond D. ONERA three-dimensional icing model.
AIAA J 1995;33(6):1038–45.
15. Bidwell C. Icing analysis of the NASA S3 icing research aircraft
using LEWICE3D version 2SAE technical paper series. In: 2007
SAE aircraft and engine icing international conference. Warrendale:
SAE International; 2007.
16. Bidwell CS. Icing analysis of a swept NACA 0012 wing using
LEWICE3D version 3.48. Proceedings of the 6th AIAA atmo-
spheric and space environments conference. Reston: AIAA; 2014.
17. Laurendeau E, Bourgault-Cote S, Ozcer IA, et al. Summary from
the 1st AIAA ice prediction workshop. Proceedings of the AIAA
AVIATION 2022 forum. Reston: AIAA; 2022.
18. Vargas M, Ratvasky T, Giriunas J. Ice accretion formations on a
NACA 0012 swept wing tip in natural icing conditions. Proceed-
ings of the 40th AIAA aerospace sciences meeting & exhibit. Reston:
AIAA; 2002.
19. Tanaka H, Ahmad T, Utsumi Y, et al. Icing on full-scale swept
wings in flight and icing wind tunnel. J Aircr 2022;59(6):1437–49.
20. Fujiwara GEC, Woodard B, Wiberg B, et al. A hybrid airfoil
design method for icing wind tunnel tests. Proceedings of the 5th
AIAA atmospheric and space environments conference. Reston:
AIAA; 2013.
21. Fujiwara GEC, Wiberg BD, Woodard B, et al. 3D swept hybrid
wing design method for icing wind tunnel tests. Proceedings of the
6th AIAA atmospheric and space environments conference. Reston:
AIAA; 2014.
22. Fujiwara GEC. Design of 3D swept wing hybrid models for icing
wind tunnel tests [dissertation]. Urbana: University of Illinois;
2015.
23. Broeren AP, Potapczuk MG, Lee S, et al. Ice-accretion test results
for three large-scale swept-wing models in the NASA icing
research tunnel. Proceedings of the 8th AIAA atmospheric and
space environments conference. Reston: AIAA; 2016.
24. Sandhu N, Soltani MR, Bragg MB, et al. Effect of simulated
scalloped ice on the aerodynamics of a swept-wing at low-reynolds
number. Proceedings of the 2018 atmospheric and space environ-
ments conference. Reston: AIAA; 2018.
230
25. Camello S, Bragg MB, Broeren AP, et al. Effect of ice shape
fidelity on swept wing aerodynamic performance. Proceedings of
the 9th AIAA atmospheric and space environments conference.
Reston: AIAA; 2017.
26. Broeren AP, Lee S, Woodard B, et al. Independent effects of
Reynolds and Mach numbers on the aerodynamics of an iced
swept wing. Proceedings of the 2018 atmospheric and space
environments conference. Reston: AIAA; 2018.
27. Lee S, Broeren AP, Woodard BS, et al. Effect of geometric fidelity
on the aerodynamics of a swept wing with scalloped ice accretion.
Proceedings of the AIAA aviation 2020 forum. Reston: AIAA;
2020.
28. Broeren AP, Lee S, Woodard BS, et al. Effect of geometric fidelity
on the aerodynamics of a swept wing with glaze ice accretion.
Proceedings of the AIAA aviation 2020 forum. Reston: AIAA;
2020.
29. Wu Y, Wei B, Liang H, et al. Flight safety oriented ice shape
modulation using distributed plasma actuator units. Chin J
Aeronaut 2021;34(10):1–5.
30. Xie LK, Liang H, Zong HH, et al. Improving aircraft aerody-
namic performance with bionic wing obtained by ice shape
modulation. Chin J Aeronaut 2023;36(2):76–86.
31. Irvine T, Kevdzija S, Sheldon D, et al. Overview of the icing and
flow quality improvements program for the NASA-glenn icing
research tunnel. Proceedings of the 39th aerospace sciences meeting
and exhibit. Reston: AIAA; 2001.
32. Vecchione L, De Matteis P. An overview of the CIRA icing wind
tunnel. Reston: AIAA; 2003.
33. SAE International Group. Calibration and acceptance of icing
wind tunnels. 2009. New York: SAE International Group;
Standard No.: SAE ARP5905.
34. Guo XD, Zhang PT, Zhao Z, et al. Airworthiness application
compliance verification of cloud flowfield in large icing wind
Q. WANG et al.
tunnel. Acta Aeronauticaet Astronautica Sinica 2020;41(10):123879
[Chinese].
35. Lee S, Broeren A, Addy H, et al. Development of 3D ice accretion
measurement method. Reston: AIAA; 2012.
36. Vargas M. Current experimental basis for modeling ice accretions
on swept wings. J Aircr 2007;44(1):274–90.
37. Tsao JC. Further evaluation of swept wing icing scaling with
maximum combined cross section ice shape profiles. Proceedings
of the 2018 atmospheric and space environments conference. Reston:
AIAA; 2018.
38. Bourgault Y, Beaugendre H, Habashi WG. Development of a
shallow-water icing model in FENSAP-ICE. J Aircr 2000;37
(4):640–6.
39. Hedde T, Guffond D. Improvement of the ONERA 3D icing code,
comparison with 3D experimental shapes. Proceedings of the 31st
aerospace sciences meeting. Reston: AIAA; 1993.
40. Huang NE, Shen Z, Long SR, et al. The empirical mode
decomposition and the Hilbert spectrum for nonlinear and non-
stationary time series analysis. Proc R Soc Lond A 1971;1998
(454):903–95.
41. Huang NE. Review of empirical mode decomposition. In: Wavelet
applications VIII. SPIE. 2001.
42. Huang NE. Hilbert-Huang transform and its applications. World
Sci 2014;16:2–12.
43. Gabriel R, Flandrin P, Goncalves P. On empirical mode decom-
position and its algorithms. In: IEEE-EURASIP workshop on
nonlinear signal and image processing. 2003.
44. SAE International Group. Icing wind tunnel interfacility compar-
ison tests. 2012. New York: SAE International Group; Standard
No.: AIR5666.
45. Bragg MB, Yoshida W, Broeren AP, et al. Ice shape classification
for swept wings. In: Proceedings of the AIAA aviation 2020 forum.
Reston: AIAA; 2020.