Ice accretion is an important problem and passive approaches for reducing ice-adhesion are of great interest in various systems such as aircrafts, power lines, wind turbines, and oil platforms. Here, we study the ice-adhesion properties of lubricant-impregnated textured surfaces. Force measurements show ice adhesion strength on textured surfaces impregnated with thermodynamically stable lubricant films to be higher than that on surfaces with excess lubricant. Systematic ice-adhesion measurements indicate that the iceadhesion strength is dependent on texture and decreases with increasing texture density. Direct cryogenic SEM imaging of the fractured ice surface and the interface between ice and lubricant-impregnated textured surface reveal stress concentrators and crack initiation sites that can increase with texture density and result in lowering adhesion strength. Thus, lubricant-impregnated surfaces have to be optimized to outperform state-of-theart icephobic treatments.

Paper: Srinivas Bengaluru Subramanyam, Konrad Rykaczewski, and Kripa K Varanasi, Langmuir.

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Ice Adhesion on Lubricant-Impregnated Textured Surfaces_300