Thickness dependence of ice removal stress for a polydimethylsiloxane nanocomposite: Sylgard 184.

Minimizing adhesion of ice has been the subject of extensive studies because of importance to applications such aircraft wings, spacecraft, and power transmission wires. A growing interest concerns coatings for wind turbine blades and refrigeration. Herein, a new laboratory test was employed to obtain the thickness dependence of ice adhesion for Sylgard 184—a filled polydimethylsiloxane elastomer. A correlation between ice adhesion and coating thickness (t) was found that follows a relationship developed by Kendall over 40 years ago for removal of a rigid object from an elastomer. With a 0.05 mm/s probe speed a nearly linear relationship between peak removal stress (Ps) and 1/t1/2 was obtained with Ps ∼ 460 kPa for an 18 μm coating, decreasing to ∼120 kPa for 533 μm. Preliminary results suggest that below ∼10 μm Ps departs from the 1/t1/2 correlation while above ∼500 μm a limiting value for Ps may be reached. We previously reported that probe speed has negligible effect on the glassy polymer PMMA. In cont...