User manual for the NASA Glenn ice accretion code LEWICE

The LEWICE (Lewis Ice Accretion) code user manual, authored by William B. Wright in 1999, serves as the definitive technical guide for a computational tool developed at the NASA Glenn Research Center. The code was created to address the critical safety concerns of aircraft icing, providing engineers with a method to predict ice shapes and aerodynamic degradation on various surfaces during flight. It emerged from decades of research into atmospheric icing physics, aiming to reduce the reliance on expensive and time-consuming physical testing in icing wind tunnels.

Designed for aerospace researchers and aviation safety engineers, the manual documents the complex numerical models that govern ice accretion processes, including heat transfer and mass balance equations. William B. Wright wrote the document to standardize the application of the LEWICE code, which had become a foundational industry standard for certifying aircraft against icing conditions. The publication is widely regarded as a rigorous academic and engineering resource, favored by the scientific community for its clarity in bridging the gap between theoretical meteorology and practical aeronautical design.