Characteristics of heat and mass transfer in moving salty droplets and its influencing factors

When ships sail in cold and harsh maritime environments such as the polar regions, sea spray can easily cause their superstructure to be frozen. Severe ice accumulation can pose a threat to the safety of ship navigation and outdoor environment operations. Accurate prediction of ice accretion due to sea spray is important to ensure safe operations in polar regions. The main difference between sea spray icing and splashing pure water freezing is the effect of salinity, thus sea spray is often simplified as salty liquid water droplets. Numerical simulation is an important means to study the icing of salty liquid water. The movement and heat/mass transfer process of salty liquid water are key factors in the numerical simulation of salty droplet icing, which determine the impingement characteristics of salty droplets and the physical quantity of impacting droplet related to icing. Based on the heat transfer model SHIPICE, we have proposed a coupled model of heat and mass transfer that considers both the loss of mass and the change in salinity during the movement of salty droplets. On the NNW-ICE platform, we have developed a coupled numerical calculation method and the corresponding program for salty droplet movement and heat/mass transfer process in the Lagrange framework, which realizes the simulation of heat and mass transfer process of moving salty droplets. Key influencing factors in the salty droplet movement and heat/mass transfer process are explored, and the heat and mass transfer effects under different conditions of incoming flow velocity, temperature, relative humidity and salty droplet diameter conditions, are systematically analyzed, laying the foundation for further development of numerical calculation methods for salty droplet icing.