We experimentally demonstrate the presence of a capillary bridge in the contact between an ice particle and a smooth aluminum surface at a relative humidity of approximately 50% and temperatures below the melting point. We conduct the experiments in a freezer with a controlled temperature and consider the mechanical instability of the bridge upon separation of the ice particle from the aluminum surface at a constant speed. We observe that a liquid bridge forms, and this formation becomes more pronounced as the temperature approaches the melting point. We also show that the separation distance is proportional to the cube root of the volume of the bridge. We hypothesize that the volume of the liquid bridge can be used to provide a rough estimate of the thickness of the liquid layer on the ice particle since in the absence of other driving mechanisms, some of the liquid on the surface must have been pulled to the bridge area. We show that the estimated value lies within the range previously reported in the literature. With these assumptions, the estimated thickness of the liquid layer decreases from nearly 56 nm at T = −1.7°C to 0.2 nm at T = −12.7°C. The dependence can be approximated with a power law, proportional to (TM − T)−β, where β < 2.6 and TM is the melting temperature. We further observe that for a rough surface, the capillary bridge formation in the considered experimental conditions vanishes.

The effectiveness of face masks for preventing airborne transmission has been debated heavily during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper investigates the filtration efficiency for four different face mask materials, two professional and two homemade, for different airflow conditions using model experiments and artificially generated water droplets. The size range chosen represents particles with the largest volume that can be suspended in air. The particles are detected using double pulsed interferometric particle imaging, from which it is possible to estimate the positions, velocity, and size of individual particles. It is found that all the tested face masks are efficient in preventing particles from transmission through the mask material. In the presence of leakage, particles larger than approximately 100𝜇m are completely removed from the air stream. The filtration efficiency decreases with the decreasing particle size to approximately 80% for 15𝜇m particles. The size dependency in the leakage is mainly due to the momentum of the larger particles. The results show that even simple face mask materials with leakage prevent a large portion of the emitted particles in the 15–150 𝜇m range.

We present experiments along with an approximate, semi-analytic, close-form solution to predict ice sintering force as a function of temperature, contact load, contact duration, and particle size during the primary stage of sintering. The ice sintering force increases nearly linear with increasing contact load but nonlinear with both contact duration and particle size in the form of a power law. The exponent of the power law for size dependence is around the value predicted by general sintering theory. The temperature dependence of the sintering force is also nonlinear and follows the Arrhenius equation. At temperatures closer to the melting point, a liquid bridge is observed upon the separation of the contacted ice particles. We also find that the ratio of ultimate tensile strength of ice to the axial stress concentration factor in tension is an important factor in determining the sintering force, and a value of nearly 1.1 MPa can best catch the sintering force of ice in different conditions. We find that the activation energy is around 41.4KJ/mol41.4KJ/mol, which is close to the previously reported data. Also, our results suggest that smaller particles are “stickier” than larger particles. Moreover, during the formation of the ice particles, cavitation and surface cracking is observed which can be one of the sources for the variations observed in the measured ice sintering force.

Stimulated Raman scattering is a phenomenon with potential use in providing real-time molecular information in three-dimensions (3D) of a sample using imaging. For precise imaging, the knowledge about the spatial generation of stimulated Raman scattering is essential. To investigate the spatial behavior in an idealized case, computer simulations and experiments were performed. For the computer simulations, diffraction theory was used for the beam propagation complemented with nonlinear phase modulation describing the interaction between the light and matter. For the experiments, a volume of ethanol was illuminated by an expanded light beam and a plane inside the volume was imaged in transmission. For generating stimulated Raman scattering, a pump beam was focused into this volume and led to a beam dump after passing the volume. The pulse duration of the two beams were 6 ns and the pump beam energy ranged from 1 to 27 mJ. The effect of increasing pump power on the spatial distribution of the Raman gain and the spatial growth of the signal at different interaction lengths between the beam and the sample was investigated. The spatial width of the region where the stimulated Raman scattering signal was generated for experiments and simulation was 0.21 and 0.09 mm, respectively. The experimental and simulation results showed that most of the stimulated Raman scattering is generated close to the pump beam focus and the maximum peak of the Stokes intensity spatially comes shortly after the peak of the pump intensity.