Partially melting of a levitated ice particle under forced advection-diffusion

Experimental and analytical study of partially melting of ice particles are presented in this research paper. The partially melting behavior of ice particles after ingested by aircraft engines is complicated and needs to be studied for a better understanding of ice crystal problems. In this study, a total of 15 test cases were conducted under a controlled environment. The partially melting state was quantified using luminescence technique with the assistance of acoustic levitation. Analytical modeling of the process was then introduced. The model took the important parameters such as ambient temperature, relative humidity, saturated vapor density etc. into consideration to close the analytical solution. With the additional information from experimental measurements, the proposed model was shown to be effective in capturing the detailed features of experimental measured melting curves. The predictions overall melting time for the entire 15 cases were also found to be accurate with only with ±5% mean error.