Freezing Mechanism and Ice Accumulation

From the icing over of hunting plains to the accretion of ice on aero planes, surface ice accumulation is inextricably linked to modern life. Therefore, understanding the freezing principles, processes, and ice accumulation is significant. This chapter begins with a brief introduction to the basic theory of icing, including the theory of surface wetting and the theory of icing phase transitions. Next, the freezing process from the perspective of embryonic nucleation and the icing behavior in static supercooled droplets and dynamic supercooled air flow were discussed, respectively. Then, icing behavior and temperature variation of wind blades under different conditions are presented. From the temperature evolutions during the dynamic icing processes, the transient processes of droplet impingement, water film/rivulets formation, and ice roughness growth were temporally resolved, providing comprehensive details of the unsteady heat transfer during the dynamic icing process. Finally, the wing surface merging and aggregation phenomena from some of the research works are presented, showing different merging and aggregation behaviors.