A molecular dynamics comparison of ice adhesion on silver and high-density polyethylene substrates

Atmospheric icing and ice shedding pose significant hazards for infrastructure exposed to freezing precipitation, particularly for long-span bridge stay cables. Ice detachment is governed by interfacial processes that depend on substrate chemistry, thermal history, and mechanical loading, yet systematic comparisons between ice melting on and detachment from metallic and polymeric surfaces remain limited. In this work, molecular dynamics simulations are used to compare ice adhesion and interfacial melting on silver (Ag) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE). Controlled thermal protocols and steered detachment simulations are applied to quantify temperature-dependent ice adhesive strength and to characterize structural evolution of ice using the tetrahedral order parameter. Results show that at subfreezing temperature, ice adhesion on Ag is consistently stronger than on HDPE, reflecting enhanced interfacial ordering and stronger ice-metal interactions. As temperature increases, ice in both systems exhibit rapid loss of crystalline order and sharp reductions in adhesive strength, converging toward similarly weak adhesion once interfacial melting develops. Parametric analyses show that ice adhesion on both substrates increases with loading rate, depends on Lennard-Jones interaction strength, and is sensitive to crystal orientation only while the ice remains ordered. These results highlight clear differences of ice adhesive response between Ag and HDPE substrates at subfreezing temperature while demonstrating that thermal disorder dominates ice detachment for both materials at elevated temperature. The comparative dataset provides a molecular-scale basis for interpreting experimental variability and for developing physics-based models of ice shedding on engineering surfaces.