Damage due to ice crystallization

The freezing of water is one of the major causes of mechanical damage in materials during wintertime; surprisingly this happens even in situations where water only partially saturates the material so that the ice has room to grow. Here we perform freezing experiments in cylindrical glass vials of various sizes and wettability properties, using a dye that exclusively colors the liquid phase; this allows precise observation of the freezing front. The visualization reveals that damage occurs in partially water-saturated media when a closed liquid inclusion forms within the ice due to the freezing of the air/water meniscus. When this water inclusion subsequently freezes, the volume expansion leads to very high pressures leading to the fracture of both the surrounding ice and the glass vial. The pressure can be understood quantitatively based on thermodynamics which correctly predicts that the crystallization pressure on the inclusion boundary is independent of the volume of the liquid pocket. Finally, our results also reveal that by changing the wetting properties of the confining walls, the formation of the liquid pockets that cause the mechanical damage can be avoided.