BIHRLE
Ice Contamination Effects Flight Training Device in action (above and below, opposite)
2009 WIND TUNNEL INTERNATIONAL ELD WTI| HP 0909.indd 1
90 percent by 2017. Since 13 percent of all weather-related accidents were found to be due to airframe icing, NASA Glenn Research Center sought to develop a sophisticated flight simulator specifically designed to demonstrate the effects of in-flight icing and train pilots to recognize and respond to the adverse flying qualities associated with ice accumulation on the aircraft. This simulator became known as the Ice Contamination Effects Flight Training Device or ICEFTD. The initial airplane chosen for the activity was the DeHavilland DHC–6 Twin Otter since NASA had extensive operational experience in icing conditions with this airplane and flight records that would be useful in the modeling and validation efforts were available. The Twin Otter also has a known sensitivity to ice contaminated tail-plane stall. NASA Glenn engineers understood that in order for the ICEFTD to be effective, it would need to model ice accumulation and the resulting impact on aircraft flying qualities to a much higher degree of accuracy and realism than was typically found in current training devices. Icing effects in even the most sophisticated present-day flight simulators are simple models that do little more than increase drag and increase weight to simulate in-flight icing.
61 26/08/2009 10:19