Rotorcraft vehicles are highly sensitive to ice accretion. When ice forms on helicopter rotor blades, performance degradation ensues due to a loss of lift and rise in drag. The presence of ice increases torque, power required, and leads to rotor vibrations. Due to these undesirable changes in the vehicle's performance, the FAA requires intensive certification to determine the helicopter’s airworthiness in icing conditions. Since flight tests and icing tunnel tests are very expensive and cannot simulate all conditions required for certification, it is becoming necessary to use computational solvers to model ice growth and subsequent performance degradation. Currently, most solvers use the strip theory approach for 3D shapes. However, rotor blades can experience significant span-wise flow from separation or centrifugal forces. The goal of this work is to investigate the influence of span-wise flow on ice accretion. The classical strip theory approach is compared to a curved surface streamline based approach to assess the relative differences in ice formation.

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