A Critical Review of Evaluation Methods of Ice Adhesion Strength on the Surface of Materials

Several techniques have already been proposed to determine ice adhesion strength. This study made a critical review of the existing methods and proposed three other techniques for ice/substrate systems, where the latter techniques have already been used to other adhesive/substrate systems. In this study, these methods are compared for their performance and limitations, with a selection of the most promising ones. The main conclusions are: in most techniques, test procedures required a long time while showing a low degree of reproducibility. Cohesive and adhesive failures, as well as a combination of both, were observed in the measurements. Macroscopic or microscopic/nanoscopic scale tests were used to evaluate ice adhesion strength Micro/nano scale tests using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) or nano indentation instrument can be used to estimate the nature and surface energy of water-repellent materials, and identify materials with low-ice adhesion. Among various methods the combination of AFM /nano-indentation technique with either lap-shear or combined lap-shear and tensile modes should be the most powerful.