An experimental study on mitigating dynamic ice accretion process on bridge cables with a superhydrophobic coating

An experimental study is conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of utilizing a superhydrophobic surface (SHS) coating to mitigate ice accretion on bridge cables and to characterize the resultant aerodynamic forces acting on bridge cables under different icing conditions. Two bridge cable models (i.e., a model with untreated hydrophilic surface and a model with SHS coated surface) were used for a comparative study. The dynamic ice accretion process and the resultant aerodynamic forces acting on the bridge models were found to change significantly after applying the SHS coating to treat the cable surface. Under glaze icing condition, the SHS coated cable model was found to have much narrower ice coverage, less amount of accreted ice mass, and smaller aerodynamic drag forces, in comparison to that with untreated cable surface. While the SHS coating was found to be less effective for icing mitigation under rime icing condition, the much rougher rime ice grains accumulated within the droplet direct impinging zone on the SHS coated cable surface caused a greater reduction of the aerodynamic drag forces acting on the cable model at the initial stage of the rime icing process. The acquired ice accretion images were correlated with aerodynamic force measurements for a better understanding of the underlying physics in the context of bridge cable icing mitigation.