Influence of localized thin areas on the bearing capacity of ice roads in Canada's North

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Ice roads, ice runways, and ice platforms provide vital access to remote areas of Canada for the resupply ofisolated communities as well as the exploration and development of natural resources for economic growth inCanada. Accurately determining the safe bearing capacity for these ice covers is critical, and is closelydependent on the ice thickness as a design parameter. Technological advances such as Ground PenetratingRadar (GPR) now allow us to take thousands of ice thickness measurements in a fraction of the time thatprevious methods of drilling through the ice and manually measuring took. Despite GPR now providing acomprehensive understanding of the ice cover thickness profile, standard of practice dictates that the absoluteminimum ice thickness measured must be the value used in design. Using the minimum ice thicknessmeasured for calculating the safe bearing capacity of an ice cover does not consider the respective location,size, or frequency of the thin ice areas. This results in an overly conservative ice cover design, which hasdetrimental effects on communities and industries in the North. NOR-EX Ice Engineering Inc. requires anunderstanding of how variations in ice thickness impact the overall performance/bearing capacity of an iceroad. The results of this research project will allow NOR-EX Ice Engineering Inc. to develop a methodologyfor using an effective ice thickness from GPR data rather than an overly conservative minimum ice thickness.