1. Discontinuity-enhanced icephobic surfaces for low ice adhesion.
- Author
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Ibáñez Ibáñez PF, Stendardo L, Ospina C, Chaudhary R, Tagliaro I, and Antonini C
- Abstract
Hypothesis: Passive low ice-adhesion surfaces are frequently composed of soft materials; however, soft materials potentially present durability issues, which could be overcome by fabricating composite surfaces with patterned rigid and soft areas. Here we propose the innovative concept of discontinuity-enhanced icephobic surfaces, where the stress concentration at the edge between rigid and soft areas, i.e. where discontinuities in elasticity are located, facilitates ice detachment., Experiments: Composite model surfaces were fabricated with controlled rigid-soft ratios and discontinuity line lengths. The ice adhesion values were measured while recording the ice/substrate interface, to unravel the underpinning ice detachment mechanism. The experiments were complemented by numerical simulations that provided a better understanding of the ice detachment mechanism., Findings: It was found that when a surface contains rigid and soft areas, stress is concentrated at the edge between soft and hard areas, i.e. at the discontinuity line, rather than all over the soft or rigid areas. An unexpected non-unidirectional crack propagation was observed for the first time and elucidated. When rigid and deformable materials are present, the crack occurs on the discontinuity line and propagates first on rigid and then on soft areas. Moreover, it was demonstrated that an increase in discontinuities promotes crack initiation and leads to a reduction of ice adhesion., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Carlo Antonini, Pablo F Ibanez Ibanez, Luca Stendardo, Catalina Ospina, Rajat Chaudhary has patent #Substrato di protezione dal ghiaccio, struttura (102023000026991) pending to University of Milano-Bicocca & University of Granada. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)
- Published
- 2024
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