Frosting and defrosting behavior of slippery surfaces and utilization of mechanical vibration to enhance defrosting performance

•Frosting and defrosting performance of slippery surfaces are experimentally investigated.•Slippery surfaces lead to effective frost retardation and reduced retained water after defrosting.•The effects of applying mechanical vibration to heat defrosting of slippery surfaces are studied.•Slippery surfaces exhibit significant reduction of defrosting time with mechanical vibration. We experimentally investigate the frosting and defrosting performance of slippery surfaces which have low sliding angles of water droplets and low ice adhesion strengths. The frosting and defrosting characteristics of slippery surfaces are compared with those of bare aluminum, hydrophilic, and superhydrophobic surfaces. The enhanced sliding properties of water droplets on the slippery surfaces effectively promote the drainage of the condensate on their surfaces, which not only leads to significant frost retardation under frosting conditions, but also substantially reduces the mass of the retained water on the surfaces after defrosting by heat. In addition, when mechanical vibration is applied together with heating during defrosting process, the low ice adhesion strengths of the slippery surfaces enable the effective detachment of the lumped frost layer from their surfaces, thereby significantly reducing the defrosting time.