An experimental study on frosting of laminar air flow on a cold surface with local cooling

This paper presents the heat and mass transfer characteristics of the humid airflow in frosting conditions. A flat plate of aluminum with cooling modules at the central region was used for the simulation of flat surface part of the fin of the heat exchanger. The local surface temperature of the plate and the local thickness and total mass of the frost on the plate were measured to analyze the heat and mass transfer characteristics. In order to analyze the frosting characteristics, an analysis algorithm was developed, which can provide the local air temperature, the frost surface temperature, the sensible and the latent heat flux distributions at the test plate. Also, by integrating the local heat flux distribution, the average heat flux characteristics were analyzed. The present experiment and analysis found that the characteristic of the upstream airflow was very different from that of the downstream airflow.