The Collection of Ice in Jet A-1 Fuel Pipes

Ice collection and blockages in fuel systems have been of interest to the aerospace community since their discovery in the late 1950’s when a B-52 crashed. A recent growth of interest was provoked by several incidents that occurred within the last few years. This study seeks to understand the underlying principles of ice growth in fuel flow systems. Tests were performed in a recirculated fuel system with a fuel tank that held approximately 115 gallons of Jet A-1 fuel and ice accumulation was observed in two removable test pipes. The setup was in an altitude chamber capable of-60 F and the experiments involved full scale flow components. Initially, tests were done to better understand the system and variables that ef-fected accumulation. First, initial conditions within the test pipes were varied. Next, pipe geometry, pipe surface properties, initial water content of the fuel and heat trans-fer from the fuel pipe were varied. As a result of the tests, observations were made about other effects involved in the study. The effects include: the result of sequen-tially run tests, the effect of the fuel on the freezing temperature of the entraine