Instability of stagnation line icing

A high Reynolds number analysis is used to investigate the stability of an ice surface lying beneath a low Mach number stagnation-line air flow. The ice surface is covered by a thin water film, whose thickness is consistent with the water mass densities typically encountered in aircraft icing cloud conditions. A multiple scales stability analysis is used to show that the ice surface can become unstable near the stagnation line. The ice surface is found to admit strongly three-dimensional linear instabilities, and increasing the Mach number suppresses the instability. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.