I will be on maternity/parental leave from December 2023. Please contact Mariachiara Gallia with your concerns and questions.
Within the scope of the research project "DRIFA - Industrial Research of the Design of Wind Turbines for Icing Conditions" we improved the spray system of the Icing Wind Tunnel of the Institute of Fluid Mechanics for simulation of low atmosphere icing conditions. The focus of my work was the redesign and subsequent calibration of the generated droplet cloud. In addition, I carried out investigations and comparison of different measurement techniques for droplet size and liquid water content. Following the Icing Wind Tunnel improvement, ice accretion experiments were performed on a typical wind turbine airfoil. The obtained experimental ice geometries were used to asses the suitability of aircraft-dedicated simulation tools for prediction of ice accretion on wind turbines. Additionally, we carried experiments to investigate the heat transfer in the wind turbine airfoil with an internal heated air flow, as well as the system's anti-icing and de-icing capabilities.