Modeling the Freezing of Supercooled Water Droplets Impacting a Cooled Substrate

Blake, J., Thompson, D., Raps, D., & Strobl, T. (2014). Modeling the Freezing of Supercooled Water Droplets Impacting a Cooled Substrate. SciTech 2014. National Harbor, MD: AIAA.

Abstract

In order to study ice adhesion at the droplet-scale, a strategy is presented to simulate the impact and solidication of a supercooled water droplet on a cooled substrate. Upon impact, nucleation is assumed to occur instantaneously, and properties of the droplet are chosen to account for the nucleation process. Simulations are performed in ANSYS Fluent using a coupled Volume of Fluid and Level-Set method to capture the air-water interface and an Enthalpy-Porosity method to capture the liquid-solid interface. Calibration of a simulation parameter, Amush, is performed in order to match experimental data for different surface types and surface temperatures. The simulation strategy successfully predicts the overall droplet response for several droplet impact conditions.