Indirect measurement of interfacial melting from macroscopic ice observations

Premelted water that is adsorbed to particle surfaces and confined to capillary regions remains in the liquid state well below the bulk melting temperature and can supply the segregated growth of ice lenses. Using macroscopic measurements of ice-lens initiation position in step-freezing experiments, we infer how the nanometer-scale thicknesses of premelted films depend on temperature depression below bulk melting. The interfacial interactions between ice, liquid, and soda-lime glass particles exhibit a power-law behavior that suggests premelting in our system is dominated by short-range electrostatic forces. Using our inferred film thicknesses as inputs to a simple force-balance model with no adjustable parameters, we obtain good quantitative agreement between numerical predictions and observed ice-lens thickness. Macroscopic observations of lensing behavior have the potential as probes of premelting behavior in other systems.