Large-scale hull loading of sea ice, lake ice, and ice in Tuktoyaktuk Harbour

As part of an INSROP project, large-scale hull loading of first-year sea ic e, two series of experiments were carried out to simulate ice loading on a ship hull, The first, Phase I, was a preliminary series on freshwater lake ice near Calgary, Alberta, and the second, Phase II, took place in Tuktoyak tuk Harbour in the Canadian Arctic also on essentially freshwater ice, Load ing was generated by hydraulic actuators impressing a rigid indentor agains t an ice edge, and by using flatjacks. A finite element analysis of the tes t geometry was carried out to assess the deformation and stress distributio ns in the ice edge for cases with both undamaged and varying degrees of dam age. The calculated and measured stiffness of the ice edge agreed for a rea listic selection of elastic modulus of tile parent ice and damaged ice. The field results did not show conclusively any influence of damage on the fai lure strength of tile ice. A review of these results, and those from Resolu te Bay sea ice obtained earlier, showed that the nature of the ice loading, depending on whether it was uniform pressure or uniform deformation, signi ficantly affected the results. The failure stress for uniform pressure test s did not have any dependence on area or aspect ratio. The measured field r esults gave average ice pressures less than those recommended by the Arctic Pollution Prevention Regulations.