#5: Ice adhesion basic research

The rapid accumulation of ice creates significant challenges for U.S. military operations and civilian activities in cold environments. It hampers mobility, disrupts communication, creates power outages and degrades infrastructure. That’s why a team of ERDC researchers is conducting innovative basic research to unravel the physical processes of how ice attaches to different surfaces, paving the way for the future development of advanced protective coating materials and the expansion of existing treatments to broader applications. On this episode of the Power of ERDC podcast, we are joined by Dr. Emily Asenath-Smith, a research materials engineer at ERDC’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) in Hanover, New Hampshire. We discuss why CRREL is the perfect place to conduct this research (3:04), the importance of studying ice adhesion (3:51), basic research and why it matters (4:32), how this research will help the military (11:07), the unique method used by the research team to grow ice (19:08) and long-term practical applications (17:10). Visit https://www.PowerofERDCPodcast.org for more information.