The team is working furiously to complete reviews of all 132 publications from the "Historical Selected Bibliography of NACA-NASA Icing Publications" by the third anniversary of icinganalysis.com on January 15, 2025.
Linotype operators circa 1942. Public Domain Library of Congress.
Public domain image by Donald Cook
The Basics introduce core concepts and vocabulary of aircraft icing with images, "the least that you need to know".
The Basics seek to facilitate initial learning about aircraft icing by:
Other sources may not do these well.
One of the most-read posts that I have written was A Gentle Introduction to Aircraft Icing, so I think that there is interest in this topic.
I got a MSME degree from the University of Wisconsin Internal Combustion Engine lab. That prepared me well for some aspects of aircraft icing (heat transfer, thermodynamics, drop physics, computational fluid dynamics). However, that by itself was not enough.
When I started in an Aircraft Systems design group, it …
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NACA Cleveland library, circa 1945.
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Info about the Blast from the Past Newsletter
Links contained are not updated.
9-30-2023
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"The situation changed in the mid-1920s when the intrepid aviators of the U.S. Air Mail Service attempted to maintain scheduled day-and-night operations between New York and Chicago... As one of their pilots noted at the time about the hazards of the New York-Chicago route, “the greatest of all our problems is ice.”" 1
From NACA-TN-313, 1929. 2
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Typical publishing sequence:
Reported in "Lew Rodert, Epistemological Liaison, and Thermal De-Icing at Ames". 1
Since I started "Blast from the Past: NACA Icing Publications" 20 months ago, I have made over 100 posts. I have extensively revised some, and made improvements to all of them, so it is time to repost them.
I will be posting links and short summaries to them in the original sequence on mastodon historians.social/@icinganalysis at a rate of three per week (about the pace that I originally posted them), so it will take almost a year to cycle through them. And I do plan on also creating new posts.
If you want to read at you own pace, you can go to the Latest Posts tab at the top of the page for the complete list of …
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From NACA-TN-2904
I have made this blog up as I went along. I have a general plan to cover all 132 icing publications in the "Selected Bibilography of NACA-NASA Aircraft Icing Publications", but I also find other interesting, related items along the way.
Future topic possibilities include:
The University of Michigan 1953 Airplane Icing Information Course. A "Greatest Thing That You (Probably) Have Never Read" candidate.
Accomplished! Thread: The University of Michigan Airplane Icing Information Course, 1953
NACA Conference on Aircraft Ice Prevention A Compilation of Papers Presented by NACA Staff Members. 6505/NACA-1947/8, 1947.
This is available at DTIC.
Thomas S. on LinkedIn.
Figure 13 of NACA-TN-1598. Formation of ice from flight on horizontal stabilizer.
Average icing rate, 4 inches per hour; liquid-water content,
0.4 grams per cubic meter; drop size, 17 microns. (Painted stripes are
1 inch wide, indicating an ice thickness of about 2 inches.)
This website was written with people in mind (engineers, aerodynamicists) who already know something about aircraft and aircraft icing.
To make it a little more understandable to others, I summarize here the assumed common knowledge, with a few of the key technical terms.
Airplanes require lift from the wings in order to fly. This lift is produced due to details of the air flowing over the well-shaped wing.
Ice may form on airplanes in flight in certain weather conditions. The ice changes the shape of the wing …
read moreAttributed to Kurt Vonnegut. For some more information about Kurt and his brother Bernard, see Supercooled Clouds.
NACA Cleveland library, circa 1945.
There are over 100 articles on this website. Here is a guide to get to what you are interested in.
(* Well, mostly, a few post-NACA era ones are mixed in.)
This is the main focus of the blog, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics publications on aircraft icing, 1915 to 1958.
There are 132 publications in The Historical Selected Bibliography of NACA-NASA Icing Publications . (Not all of them have been reviewed yet.)
This blog was written in "threads" or themes on topics. Threads will have links to several articles. It is suggested, but not required, to read the articles in the order below.
read morefrom Queen, "Don't Stop Me Now".
Standard weights and other measurements in use. 1
The unit system used herein is detailed.
mass: kg
force: N
length: m
tk: temperature, K
time: seconds, s
p: air static pressure, Pa (N/m^2)
u: free-stream air speed, m/s
altitude: pressure altitude, m
energy: J or N-m
d_drop: water drop diameter, micrometer (1e-6 m)
lwc: liquid water content, g/m^3
The units in the NACA publications vaguely follow "US Customary" units, although there are often exceptions:
mass: g, kg, lbm, slug
force: N, lbf
length: micron, inch, foot, mile, nautical mile
temperature: F, R
time: s, hour
air static pressure, lbf/in …
This site is still under development.
Do not expect the site content, structure, nor links to be stable.
Author: Donald E. Cook
A Gentle Introduction to Aircraft Icing
Python programming style guide
The Blast from the Past Newsletter
The web content is hosted at two, mirrored sites:
icinganalysis.github.io
icinganalysis.com
“If you want to go somewhere, it’s best to find someone who has already been there” Robert Kiyosaki
Many new aircraft icing problems aren’t new at all. Like excavating a lost city, many surprises, answers to problems, road maps, and confirmations can be found in the work of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). This treasure trove of data can help you today.
Why care about aircraft icing? If ice forms on a plane during flight, it can be hazardous. Engineers research the weather conditions aircraft will encounter and work to ensure that they can navigate them safely.
On this website, I make selected NACA publications easily accessible to you. I have read thousands of pages so that you do not have to.
I summarize each paper for you with:
- a quote from the paper
- a one-line summary
- the …