Experimental study on behavior of frost crystal formation

Frost formation oil a cold flat plate with nature convection was experimentally studied using microscopic visualization technique. Both phase change behavior of frosting processes and shapes of frost crystals were different at various cold temperatures and water vapor pressures. There were two types, vapor-liquid-solid and direct vapor-solid phase change processes observed, sometime simultaneously producing at different sites of the plate. The randomness of liquid-solid transition time was noted and described using a probability model proposed. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd.