A new method for measuring ice adhesion strength at an ice–substrate interface

This research focuses on the development of a direct technique for measuring atmospheric ice adhesion strength using embedded piezoelectric film sensors at the ice-substrate interface. The substrate is a small aluminium beam on which PVDF piezoelectric sensors are bonded. The composite beam formed by aluminium and an ice layer is submitted to sinusoidal stress at the interface by a shaker on which one end of the beam is clamped. The piezoelectric charge coefficient is used to predict the electric charge density induced on the piezoelectric film, which enables us to develop a macroscopic and direct measurement technique for determining mechanical stresses at the atmospheric-ice-substrate interface. The preliminary results obtained show that adhesive failure was obtained for each test for a frequency close to the natural resonance frequency of the aluminium beam. Within the limitations of the experimental conditions, it was possible using this approach to obtain ice adhesion strengths in accordance with those obtained in the literature. This demonstrates the feasibility of this simple ice adhesion testing method