The evaluation of icephobic properties of surfaces suffers from a lack of regulation.

In particular, for the analysis of ice adhesion, reliability and repeatability of tests are a concern as ice detachment measurements involve setting numerous experimental parameters that can influence the final results. Furthermore, it is not yet clear whether there is a dependence between some properties of the tested samples, such as roughness and wettability, and the optimal setting of experimental parameters.

To provide a broader perspective on this topic, we conducted an in-depth study to find optimized parameters for our instrumental setup in search of a set of common parameters to use as a standard method. We studied the icephobic behavior of various samples by measuring the shear stress between ice and surfaces while varying experimental conditions and sample roughness.

Samples were immersed in water and frozen at temperatures ranging from -8°C to -18°C with freezing times up to 96 hours to evaluate how ice growth can affect adhesion.

The tested samples were aluminum alloy samples with different surface finishes: smooth samples, micro-roughened samples, and micro-nano-roughened samples. The smooth sample was obtained through a wet brushing process.

To better understand the effect of temperature and freezing time on the samples, all samples were characterized in terms of morphology and wettability before and after the icing process. Some differences were found in terms of shear stress values and repeatability, and correlations were found between test parameters and sample properties.