Originally Posted by
tucumseh
I think a typical Icing section in an RTS will provide a good indication of what factors are considered; some of which are universal (e.g. icing deemed to exist in certain temperature/visibility conditions), others aircraft-dependant (e.g. engine surge margins). Modelling will have given a good indication of what to expect, and one then gradually expands the opertating envelope to verify performance. But one tends not to (deliberately) get to the stage where the testing is destructive. Although things are a little blurred by today's use of the term 'drone', which is a quite different thing to people of a certain age!
Oh the testing wasn't
deliberately destructive. They were in the gradually exploring the envelope stage by my reading of the report, but didn't catch the deteriorating situation in time. I seem to recall they had most (all?) of the anti icing on though so probably not a pass for that data point.
Not that I don't think the whole programme hasn't been a massive cluster.