Weighing Cylinder Instrument with Controlled De-Icing for Ice Accretion Measurements

Ice collecting cylinders are widely used in atmospheric icing measurements to predict the amount of ice collected by various structures in an icing environment. The mass of the accreted ice on the surface of cylinders and other object shapes can be modelled using ISO12494:2017 standard Atmospheric icing of structures which links atmospheric parameters and various object shapes. Reliable measurement of the icing conditions (icing rate) assumes an ideal cylinder-shaped surface with a fixed diameter meaning that the accreted ice layer during the measurement should be thin and free of inconsistency in ice accretion. Thus, any accreted ice should be removed before starting the measurement and the weighing sensor has to be sensitive enough to accurately measure ice loads of few tens of grams. A novel rotating cylinder based instrument, IceMan (Ice Manager), was constructed according to the guidelines of the icing standard. Unlike the other similar devices, it has ability to remove the accreted ice before each measurement and to measure ice masses from 0 to 260 g with a reasonable uncertainty of ±1.5 g making it potentially highly suitable for the assessment of icing conditions. Agreement between the ice accretion rate measured with the IceMan instrument and the icing rate calculated using the ISO 12494:2017 standard was confirmed with field measurements. The results show good agreement within the validity range of the icing model of the standard.