Characterization method of hydrophobic anti-icing coatings.

For anti-icing, supercooled water should be removed before frozen onto the contact surface. We use a hydrophobic coating for anti-icing and introduce the static- and dynamic-evaluation methods. The methods describe the contact surface between the hydrophobic surface and a supercooled-water droplet. The former is based on the contact angle, and the latter is based on the sliding angle. The temperature factor is included in these models to evaluate the hydrophobic coating under the supercooled conditions. Four hydrophobic coatings are experimentally evaluated based on the static- and dynamic evaluation methods: C1-C3 (commercial fluorocarbon coatings), and Jaxa coating (original fluorocarbon coating). These are evaluated under the supercooled conditions of -10 to 0 °C. The static-evaluation shows variations in the temperature. However, change in the contact angle by the temperature is relatively small compared to that of the sliding angle for the dynamic evaluation. Only C3 and Jaxa coatings are tolerant to the sliding angle under the supercooled conditions tested. The dynamic evaluation shows that even if the coating is hydrophobic, the dynamic evaluation should be included to understand the characteristic of removal for a supercooled-water droplet.