Bio-inspired design of ice-retardant devices based on benthic marine invertebrates: the effect of surface texture
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Bioengineering, Biophysics, Marine Biology, Zoology
- Keywords
- ice, invertebrates, Antarctica, benthic, texture
- Copyright
- © 2014 Mehrabani et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2014. Bio-inspired design of ice-retardant devices based on benthic marine invertebrates: the effect of surface texture. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e425v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.425v1
Abstract
Growth of ice on surfaces poses a challenge for both organisms and for devices that come into contact with liquids below the freezing point. Resistance of some organisms to ice formation and growth, either in subtidal environments (e.g. Antarctic anchor ice), or in environments with moisture and cold air (e.g. plants, intertidal) begs examination of how this is accomplished. Several factors may be important in promoting or mitigating ice formation. As a start, here we examine the effect of surface texture alone. We tested four candidate surfaces, inspired by hard-shelled marine invertebrates and constructed using a three-dimensional printing process. We screened biological and artificial samples for ice formation and accretion in submerged conditions using previous methods, and developed a new test to examine ice formation from surface droplets as might be encountered in environments with moist, cold air. It appears surface texture plays only a small role in delaying the onset of ice formation: a stripe feature (corresponding to patterning found on valves of blue mussels, Mytilus edulis, or on the spines of the Antarctic sea urchin Sterechinus neumayeri) slowed ice formation an average of 25% compared to a grid feature (corresponding to patterning found on sub-polar butterclams, Saxidomas nuttali). The geometric dimensions of the features have only a small (~6%) effect on ice formation. Surface texture affects ice formation, but does not explain by itself the large variation in ice formation and species-specific ice resistance observed in other work. This suggests future examination of other factors, such as material elastic properties and surface coatings, and their interaction with surface pattern.
Supplemental Information
Time lapse video of droplet test
Time lapse video of droplet test, taken at 1 frame/s and played back at 30 frame/s.