Transient two-dimensional heat transfer through a composite body with application to deicing of aircraft components

Nine different numerical methods are examined for their ability to model the process of the melting and removal of ice from an airfoil using electrothermal heaters. A technique is presented for modeling the phase change which assumes a phase for each node. The technique allows solvers such as Alternating Direction Implicit, Alternating Direction Explicit, and Strongly Implicit Procedure to find a solution which can then be iterated to find the correct phase of each node. Comparisons made for a standard deicer pad comprised of five layers showed the ADI method to be superior to the other methods considered.