Experimental study on impact load on ice

Abstract

The interaction velocity of ice breakers with ice during ice collision is greatly beyond the scope of traditional experiments on the compressive strength of ice. To explore the destruction mechanism of sea ice under impact, field experiments were conducted in the winter of 2019-2020 in the coastal saltwater lake of Liaodong Bay. A self-developed impact test machine was employed to study two types of ice samples (7 cm×7 cm×17.5 cm and 13 cm×13 cm×17.5 cm) under the conditions of five impact velocities (1.2, 2.5, 3.1, 3.6, and 3.9 m/s), three types of impact head shapes (disk, hemispheric, and wedge shapes), and nine impact head sizes (the diameter of the impact head or the bottom side length is 3, 5, and 7 cm for each shape). The results prove the feasibility of the test device and experimental methods, and they show that the impact damage of the ice samples with large sections is relatively low, but the impact load is large. The shape of the impact head is an important factor affecting the destruction of ice samples. When the impact kinetic energy and the size of the samples are the same, the damage of the sample caused by the shape is severe, and the impact load is small. Moreover, for impact heads of the same type, under a low impact speed, the ice samples are not damaged, and the impact load increases with the increasing speed. Under a high impact speed, the ice samples are seriously damaged, and the impact load decreases with the increasing speed.