Date of Award

8-1-2018

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

M.S.

Organizational Unit

Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science, Mechanical and Materials Engineering

First Advisor

Maciej Kumosa, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Susan Sadler, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Matt Gordon

Keywords

Accelerated aging, Icephobic, Ice shedding, Polydimethylsiloxane

Abstract

The goal of this study was to evaluate and optimize the ice adhesion test initially developed by the University of Denver and to examine Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) based silicone rubbers for their ice-phobicity as a function of their physical and chemistry properties, and under severe oxidative aging. The test is based on an ice block bonded to a silicone rubber substrate and subjected to shear. In its original state, the test had severe limitations that caused the ice to be dislodged through a mixture of shear and peeling. Several steps were taken in this research to improve the test, and the work was successfully supported by finite element numerical simulations. Testing PDMS rubber substrates of various crosslink densities revealed that their ice adhesion strengths decreased as the crosslinking was reduced. It was shown for the first time that aging in hypochlorous acid greatly affected ice-phobicity of the rubbers.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Theodore R. Woll

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

79 p.

Discipline

Materials Science

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