The winter season might be pleasant, but when it comes to ice, that’s when things begin to heat up. No doubt, those of us who have a car known how hard it is to get the ice off our windshields. Traditional solutions involved scrapping the ice off using a special tool or using expensive deicing substances. But, a new research project shows that rubber can be used to manufacture inexpensive and efficient ice-repelling sprays.
For as long as we can remember, every winter was the same. The children would rejoice while playing in the snow while one of the parents tried to wipe off the blasted ice formed on the car’s windshield.
Typical solutions involved either intense manual labor, meaning that the car owner had to scrape off the ice formed on the windshields or using very expensive deicing solutions. A deicing spray might beat scrapping off all day, but when the ice is too thick, it won’t be of much use.
This is where the latest research project comes in. A team of scientists managed to develop an ice-repellant spray using only synthetical rubber. According to their initial results, the new spray fares much better than tradition deicing solutions.
In fact, the new ice-repelling substance works so great that after you’ve applied on the surface, you won’t need to use your hand in order to remove the ice, because gravity will do it for you.
According to Kevin Golovin, the lead author of the study, the beauty of this new ice-repelling substance resides in its simplicity. As he explains, prior research into ice-repelling substances sought to make surfaces either slippery or water-repellant.
Golovin said that simple physics aided them to see that the solution to this problem is much more simplistic than that. Rather than tinkering with the water’s chemical properties, the scientists used a natural phenomenon to their advantage.
The phenomenon is called interfacial cavitation, and it refers to how a solid material behaves when it is attached to a rubbery surface. A solid material behaves much different when it adheres to a rubbery and slippery material than to another solid material.
The adhesion factor is what makes this substance so useful. Once the material is sprayed over a layer of ice, the rubbery found inside begins to form a thin layer under the ice. Using gravity or a small air breeze you could dislocate the ice sheet easier and without breaking a sweat.
The team said that the product can be fine-tuned in order to serve several industries like avionics, shipping, transportation and industry in general.