Abstract
Glaze, the most dangerous ice type in natural environment, forms during sleet weather, which is usually accompanied with wind. The icing performance of hydrophobic coatings under the impact of wind needs further research. This paper studies the influence of hydrophobicity on ice accumulation process under sleet and wind conditions by computer simulations and icing tests. The results indicate that the heat dissipation process of droplets on samples with various hydrophobicity will be accelerated by wind significantly and that a higher hydrophobicity cannot reduce the cooling rate effectively. However, on different hydrophobic surfaces, the ice accumulation process has different characteristics. On a hydrophilic surface, the falling droplets form continuously water film, which will be cooled fast. On superhydrophobic surface, the frozen droplets form ice bulges, which can shield from wind and slow down the heat dissipation process. These ice accumulation characteristics lead to the difference in ice morphology and make a higher hydrophobic surface to have a lower ice mass growth rate in long period icing tests. As a conclusion, superhydrophobic coating remain icephobic under wind and sleet conditions.
Highlights
Ice formation and accumulation on important parts of a structure will cause damages, severe accidents, and economic losses in many fields such as aerospace, transportation, and power communication.[1]
Superhydrophobic surface is a kind of biomimetic material that exhibits excellent water repellency because of the synergistic effect of hierarchical rough structure and low surface energy.[3]
This paper studies the influence of hydrophobicity on ice accumulation process under sleet and wind conditions by computer simulations and icing tests in icing wind tunnel and natural environment
Summary
Ice formation and accumulation on important parts of a structure will cause damages, severe accidents, and economic losses in many fields such as aerospace, transportation, and power communication.[1]. The possible reasons for the different experimental conclusions may be the differences in hydrophobic coatings’ properties and icing conditions This indicates that the action mechanism of hydrophobicity on the ice accumulation process is still not explicit. In the freezing process of a single droplet do not consider the effects of air flow, interaction between adjacent droplets, accumulation process and formation of frost are not considered This is the reason why the model could not explain the icephobicity of superhydrophobic surfaces under a long period of icing process. The main methods of investigating icing physical process include computational icing models, artificial icing tests and continuous filed measurement.[21] This paper studies the influence of hydrophobicity on ice accumulation process under sleet and wind conditions by computer simulations and icing tests in icing wind tunnel and natural environment. Combined with the simulation results, this paper proposes the action mechanism of superhydrophobic surface on ice accumulating under windy and sleet condition
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