Published October 2, 2024 | Published
Journal Article Open

A Phase-Field Model for Wet Snow Metamorphism

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
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Abstract

The microstructure of snow determines its fundamental properties such as mechanical strength, reflectivity, or thermo-hydraulic properties. Snow undergoes continuous microstructural changes due to local gradients in temperature, humidity, or curvature, in a process known as snow metamorphism. In this work, we focus on wet snow metamorphism, which occurs when the temperature is close to the melting point and involves phase transitions among liquid water, water vapor, and solid ice. We propose a pore-scale phase-field model that simultaneously captures the three relevant phase change phenomena: sublimation (deposition), evaporation (condensation), and melting (solidification). The phase-field formulation allows one to track the temperature evolution among the three phases and the water vapor concentration in the air. Our three-phase model recovers the corresponding two-phase transition model when one phase is not present in the system. 2D simulations of the model unveil the impact of humidity and temperature on the dynamics of wet snow metamorphism at the pore scale. We also explore the role of liquid melt content in controlling the dynamics of snow metamorphism in contrast to the dry regime before percolation onsets. The model can be readily extended to incorporate two-phase flow and may be the basis for investigating other problems involving water phase transitions in a vapor–solid–liquid system, such as airplane icing or thermal spray coating.

Copyright and License

© 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.  This publication is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Acknowledgement

The authors acknowledge the partial support from the Resnick Sustainability Institute at California Institute of Technology, the National Science Foundation under Grant No. EAR-2243631, and the ACS Petroleum Research Fund Doctoral New Investigator Grant No. 66867-DNI9. The authors also acknowledge insightful discussions with Dr. Quirine Krol.

Supplemental Material

Equivalence to models of two-phase transition and additional details for numerical implementation (PDF).

 

 

 

Additional Information

Published as part of Crystal Growth & Design special issue “Heterogeneous Drivers of Ice Formation”.

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Additional details

Created:
October 10, 2024
Modified:
October 10, 2024