Investigation of practical methods to assess the bearing capacity of ice covers under static loads

虽然冰是土木工程应用中遇到的最复杂的材料之一，但冰盖有 长期以来一直被证明在施工和各种现场作业中支持荷载是有效和经济的 (冬季道路、海上平台、简易机场、钻机和起重机等)。除了可以直接在 冰结构不会对环境造成持久的影响，因为它们通常在春季和 夏天。然而，安全的冰上作业需要足够的冰盖厚度来适当地支撑 施加固定或移动的负载。这一承载能力应严格使用高效 考虑季节性的方法-施加了严格的时间限制。考虑到这一点更加关键 短期和长期温度变化频繁，其中部分原因是全球气候变化。 建议的研究工作旨在确定冰盖在不同荷载作用下的承载能力。 长期荷载和各种边界条件。目前，冰盖的承载能力为 通过应用几十年来发展起来的经验或近似分析公式进行评估 (韦斯特加德1948年、怀曼1950年、迈耶霍夫1962年、内维尔1965年等)。虽然这些解析解具有 在过去的50多年里，为该行业提供了良好的服务，需要改进的分析或数值工具来 考虑新的可用的建模技术。这种更新的工具还将使更好地评估 冰盖承载能力与全球气候变化和新安全的关系 北方项目的要求。还需要更先进的方法来更多地利用冰盖 有效地作为当前和未来北方项目的工作平台。在此背景下，本研究项目 将为工业合作伙伴提供最先进的实用数值模拟技术，以高效地 评估冰盖对其冰上工程项目所需的安全冰上作业的承载能力。

While ice is one of the most complex materials encountered in civil engineering applications, ice covers have long been proven effective and economical in supporting loads during construction and various field operations (winter roads, offshore platforms, airstrips, drill rigs and cranes, etc.). In addition to being directly available on site, ice structures have no lasting environmental impacts as they generally melt naturally during spring and summer. However, safe on-ice operations require a sufficient ice cover thickness to appropriately support applied stationary or mobile loads. This bearing capacity should be determined rigorously using efficient methods that account for seasonality-imposed strict time limitations. This is even more critical considering frequent short- and long term temperature variations, part of which are due to global climate change. The proposed research work aims at determining the bearing capacity of ice sheets subjected to variable shortand long-term loading and various boundary conditions. Currently, the bearing capacity of ice covers is evaluated by applying empirical or approximate analytical formulations which were developed several decades ago (Westergaard 1948, Wyman 1950, Meyerhof 1962, Nevel 1965, etc.). While these analytical solutions have served the industry well for the past 50 plus years, improved analytical or numerical tools are needed to account for new available modeling techniques. Such updated tools would also enable a better assessment of the bearing capacity of ice covers in relation with impacts of global climate change and new safety requirements for Northern projects. More advanced methods are also required for utilizing ice covers more effectively as a working platform on current and future Northern projects. In this context, this research project will provide the industrial partner with state-of-the-art practical numerical modeling techniques to efficiently assess the bearing capacity of ice covers for safe on-ice operations required in their ice-engineering projects.