Freezing characters study of the sessile seawater drop on a cold substrate

Abstract

Sea spray icing poses risks to vessels and offshore structures in cold ocean regions. Compared to many research works dealing with the freezing of fresh water, the freezing process of sessile seawater drop was less discussed. The coupled level set and volume of fluid method combined with the enthalpy–porosity method is used to solve the Stefan problem. A two-dimensional (2D) axis-symmetric model is adopted to describe the freezing and temperature variation process. Numerical results were verified by our experiment results. The initial geometric profile of sessile drops was characterized by the Young–Laplace equation. Various salinities within the oceanographic range (10–40 g/kg) were adopted, and results showed that the freezing time increases dramatically with increasing salinity. The influence of the contact angle and substrate temperature in the freezing process was also concentrated. All these results contributed to a better understanding of the icing mechanism on marine surfaces.