Author(s): M. Karulina; E. Karulin; A. Marchenko; A. Sakharov; P. Chistyakov; A. Sliusarenko
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Abstract: The compressive strength of sea ice is one of the primary mechanical ice properties. This parameter can be found by tests on small (10 to 20 cm) samples picked from different layers across the ice sheet thickness as well as full-scale tests where the compressive ice strength is referred to the full ice thickness. Full-scale tests with loading of floating ice across its full thickness are preferable for compressive ice strength evaluations but involve more technical challenges in the field compared to tests on small-scale samples. However the relationship between the ice compressive strength values obtained by small- and full-scale tests is not yet sufficiently understood and needs further investigations. Sea ice has inhomogeneous structure, temperature and brine content across its thickness. The problem with strength evaluation procedures based on small samples picked from different horizontal layers of ice is that these samples fail to keep the layer-specific temperature of ice. This paper describes a special-purpose experimental technology that has enabled researchers to maintain the temperature of small-scale ice samples as close as possible to the original temperature up to compressive ice strength tests. These tests provided compressive strength distribution curves across ice thickness, and thus obtained average integral values of ice compressive strength are compared with the data from full-scale tests.
Year: 2020