Freezing receding contact lines

TL;DR

This study experimentally examines the steady receding of a contact line involving freezing ice on a moving Peltier module, revealing how meniscus height relates to flow properties, freezing, and contact angle.

Contribution

It introduces a model linking meniscus height to flow dynamics and freezing, estimating the water-ice contact angle around 6 degrees.

Findings

Meniscus height correlates with flow and freezing behavior.

For high speeds, meniscus relates to Landau-Levich film extraction.

At low speeds, meniscus height depends on water-ice contact angle.

Abstract

We investigate experimentally the receding of a contact line when a Peltier module is pulled out of a water bath at constant speed, while a ice layer is also growing at constant speed on the Peltier module. A steady regime is therefore reached for all the parameters used in this studied, corresponding to a dynamical stationnary meniscus. We show that the height of the meniscus provides most of the properties of the flow. For high pulling rate, it is related to the amount of liquid of the equivalent Landau-Levich (LL) film that would be extracted from the bath, which is eventually freezing as the plate is lifted upward. For smaller velocity, so that no LL film would be formed without freezing, the meniscus height is directly linked to the contact angle of water on ice in these conditions. Solving numerically the meniscus equation taking into account the solidifcation of water, our results suggest that the contact angle of water on ice should be around $6^\circ$.