Abstract
A prerequisite for designing materials with low adhesion to ice is to accurately measure the ice adhesion strength of the surface. The majority of studies in this field have typically focused on manipulating and measuring the adhesion strength of different materials under shear stress. Among them, elastomers have proven to be promising ice-phobic surfaces because they enable interfacial cavitation, a tension-driven surface instability. In this work, a high throughput, low cost device is designed to measure the tensile ice adhesion strength of different surfaces. The design and construction of the tensile ice adhesion measurement system is presented, along with the reasoning for the design decisions. The performance of the setup is characterized using experimental trials varying parameters such as temperature, pull-off speed, thickness of the substrate, and ice/substrate interfacial area, to verify the precision of the measurements.
Highlights
Okanagan Polymer Engineering Research & Applications Laboratory, School of Engineering, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada article info
The low ice adhesion is enabled by a surface instability known as interfacial cavitation, which is a tension-driven phenomenon [7]
Yan et al [27] used a universal mechanical testing machine to measure the tensile adhesion of ice by placing the entire measurement device into a freezing room in order to produce the ice
Summary
Regular removal of the ice can lead to further damage, mainly due to the strong adhesion between ice and most materials. To overcome this issue many scientists have successfully designed and fabricated surfaces with reduced adhesion to ice [1,2]. Davis et al [28] used this method to measure the adhesion of ice to their surfaces with different values of roughness This device is quite complex, requires a starter crack, and has only been demonstrated inside an icing wind tunnel, which are rare and expensive to fabricate. Various experimental test parameters such as temperature, speed of the applied force, iced area, and thickness of the test material can be varied independently
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