Author(s): Isabelle Theriault; Jean-Philippe Saucet; Wael Taha
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Abstract: As part of the Environmental Studies related to the new hydroelectric project La Romaine, Hydro-Quebec had to forecast changes to the ice regime of the river reach affected by the project, with focus on the security of the ice cover for crossing snowmobiles. The Mike-Ice model was jointly developed as an add-in module of the Danish Hydraulic Institute’s MIKE11 software for river ice modeling. It was used to reproduce the ice regime in present conditions and changes due to the water temperature and increase of winter flow. Since the study of Romaine River was among the first applications of MIKE-Ice, the model was validated on a similar river with available benchmarking data. This validation testcase reproduced a stretch of the Peribonka River, which is supplied throughout the winter season by water with temperatures above the freezing point. Satellite images were used to monitor, during winter, the evolution of ice covers on the river subjected to thermal erosion and flow rate variations, due to operation of hydroelectric generating stations. . The extent of the ice covers were clearly identified for about20 to 30 instances in the course of a winter, which gives a timely representation that is far more detailed than most practically available methods, and allows the follow-up of rapid responses of the ice fields to hydro-meteorological variations. This data enabled us to validate the one-dimensional unsteady numerical model MIKE-ICE, which computes overall thermal balances and interactions between the flow and the different types of ice, static or drifting. A new formulation is proposed to model the openings of an ice cover subjected to thermal erosion.
Year: 2010