Simultaneous monitoring of ice accretion and thermography of an airfoil: an IR imaging methodology

A novel image analysis methodology based on infrared (IR) imaging was developed for simultaneous monitoring of ice accretion and thermography of airfoils. In this study, an IR camera was calibrated and used to measure the surface temperature of the energized airfoils, and monitor the ice accretion and growth pattern on the airfoils' surfaces. The methodology comprises the automatic processing of a series of IR video frames with the purpose of detecting ice pattern evolution during the icing test period. A specially developed MATLAB code was used to detect the iced areas in the IR images, and simultaneously monitor surface temperature evolution of the airfoil during an icing test. Knowing the correlation between the icing pattern and surface temperature changes during an icing test is essential for energy efficient design of thermal icing mitigation systems. Processed IR images were also used to determine the ice accumulation rate on the airfoil's surface in a given icing test. The proposed methodology has been demonstrated to work successfully, since the optical images taken at the end of icing tests from the airfoils' surfaces compared well with the processed IR images detecting the ice grown outward from the airfoils' leading edge area.