Journal of Northeastern University ›› 2012, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (11): 1591-1594.DOI: -

• OriginalPaper • Previous Articles     Next Articles

DLA model for frost crystal growth on hydrophobic cold surface

Lei, Hong (1); Qiao, Na (1); Geng, Dian-Qiao (1); Zhang, Hong-Wei (1)   

  1. (1) Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Processing of Materials, Ministry of Education, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China
  • Received:2013-06-19 Revised:2013-06-19 Published:2013-01-25
  • Contact: Lei, H.
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Abstract: On the base of DLA (Diffusion-Limited Aggregation) model, a two-dimensional mathematical model was developed to describe the frost crystal growth on the hydrophobic cold surface in order to have a deep insight into the dynamic growth process of frost crystal. In this model, the surfaces with different ice beads were used to simulate the different hydrophobic surfaces, and the metal surface was covered with ice beads. The movement of the water-vapor molecule was described by the particle's movement in the grid-nodes, and the probability for the particle to move at each direction was the same. Numerical results showed that the predicted frost dynamic growth process of frost crystal conforms to the existed experimental result. The predicted dendritic frost crystal has the fractal structure, and its fractal dimension is between 1.44 and 1.78. Such results are in good agreement with the experimental data. The frost crystal grows up slowly and distributes sparsely on the hydrophobic cold surface, and the frost formation on the cold surface with bad hydrophobic coating is similar to that on the metal surface.

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