The Design Width of Floating Ice Roads and Effect of Longitudinal Cracks

Abstract

The thickened width of floating ice roads has tended to be a practical consideration rather than a design aspect. Standard methods of calculating the required thickness of ice roads consider the road to be of infinite length and width. In this paper we outline calculations of the bending stress for a finite width ice road. The recommended minimum width that should be thickened to the design value is given below where Lc is the ice characteristic length: Longitudinal wet cracks reduce the load bearing capacity of an ice road. Stress analysis indicated that as long as the ice is less than 1.83m thick and the footprint of the vehicle is longer than 10 m (33 ft) then a safe and simple to use estimate of the road capacity for a vehicle travelling parallel and adjacent to the crack is given by: