Experimental Study on the Shear Adhesion Strength Between the Ice and Substrate in Icing Wind Tunnel

The icing wind tunnel can simulate the air flow at a high altitude; such an air flow contains supercooled droplets moving at certain velocities. An integrated experiment method was proposed, and it included the icing test and shear stress measurements in the simulated environment of the icing wind tunnel. The error caused by the change in experimental environments was completely eliminated with this novel method. Thus, there was no discrepancy between the real-time and experimental values of shear stress between the ice and substrate. The experiments of icing and shear stress measurements are carried out by varying the following parameters: icing temperature, mean volume diameter (MVD) of droplets, and surface roughness of the substrate. The results indicate that the shear stress between the ice and the substrate increases with the decrease in temperature provided the temperature is relatively high. When the MVD value is 22 μm, the liquid water content is about 1 g/m3and surface roughness is 2 μm. Under these conditions, the shear stress reaches its maximum value at a temperature of –15°C. The shear stress is also affected by the MVD values of droplets, and the surface roughness of substrate.