Icing Rate on Stationary Structures Under Marine Conditions

• Published in: Journal of Glaciology
• Main Author: Itagaki, K.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1977
• Subjects: Earth-Surface Processes; Journal of Glaciology
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022143000029695; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022143000029695

Abstract Icing on stationary structures is an increasingly serious problem as off-shore drilling operations in the sub-polar regions becomes more popular. Since this problem is less complicated than icing on a ship, an attempt was made to calculate accretion rate using existing data. The rate of ice accumulation R can be calculated from R = C f C c F where F is the mass flux of the water drops and C f and C c are the proportions of spray frozen on the surface and coefficient of capture of drops, respectively. C c can be close to unity for larger drops such as sea spray. Although many other factors may contribute, C f seems to be a strong function of the air temperature. Mass flux can be written as Vr 3 dr where n ( r ) is the number of drops of radius r in unit volume, V is the wind velocity, ρ is the density of water; n(r) is a function of wind velocity and height of observation. For a stationary structure, the mass flux is primarily dependent upon the wind speed. The ice accretion rate R, calculated using published data on the size distribution of sea spray and using a capture efficiency C c of I agrees surprisingly well with the diagrams given by previous authors for icing on ships.