Freezing contact line

Ice accretion on airplane, wire or roadway, formation of ice fall, ice stalactite, frozen river or aufeis, are a few examples of ice structures formed by the solidification of capillary flows (drop, rivulet, film). Among the many scientific questions that remain open to understand these problems, the effect of freezing on the contact line motion is undoubtedly one of the most important and mysterious. In this talk, we experimentally investigate three situations where advancing and receding contact line is coupled to freezing: capillary and inertial spreading of a water droplet on a cold substrate and water film dewetting on its own ice. These configurations allow us to propose the main mechanisms that explain the arrest of a contact line due to solidification and to tackle the intricate problem of the wetting of water on ice.