Leveraging Solidification Dynamics to Design Robust Ice-Shedding Surfaces

The adhesion of ice to external surfaces is an important
challenge
in many industries. This has sparked much research into fabricating
surfaces with low ice adhesion strengths. Our novel approach to designing
ice-shedding surfaces leverages the dynamics of water solidification
to induce beneficial stress concentrations throughout the iced interface.
We have chosen a bare woven metal wire cloth substrate to demonstrate
these principles. The pore geometries of the wire cloths lead to stress
concentrations upon freezing and expansion of the water/ice, while
their microstructural topography allows for facile crack opening.
We have discovered that by leveraging knowledge of the underlying
physical processes involved in ice formation and delamination, we
can engineer a robust metal surface to have an extremely low ice adhesion
strength (12.5 kPa) without using chemical coatings.