Ice accretion on power lines is a random natural phenomenon and may seriously harm to the safety of power network. However

the mechanism of the freezing process of super-cooled water droplet impacting on wires is still not fully understood at present. In this paper

an experimental investigation on the freezing mechanism of the super-cooled water droplet impacting on a cold wire surface is performed. The morphological characters and the impact dynamics of a single super-cooled droplet collide on the cylindrical metal surfaces have been revealed with high-speed photographing. An instantaneous freezing phenomenon of the super-cooled impacting droplet was identified and the condition boundary for this kind of freezing was obtained statistically from the experimental data for the surfaces of stainless steel

copper and aluminum

on which the super-cooled droplets impinging with speeds of 2.2 m/s and 4.3 m/s. Meanwhile

the dynamic images of the ice accretion on a real aluminum wire with the droplet impinging rate from 0.6 to 2.2 drops/s in ambient temperature from -2℃ to -8℃ were obtained and the morphological behaviors of these accretion processes were analyzed.