A Study of the Failure Mechanisms of Ice Ridges Interacting with the Confederation Bridge Piers, Results of Detailed Video and Sonar Data Analysis

After eight winters of the extensive monitoring program for the interaction between ice features and the piers of the PEI Confederation Bridge, a detailed video has been done. This paper introduces the results of this video analysis which mainly concentrates on revealing different failure mechanisms that take place for the first year ice ridges, whether they occur simultaneously or progressively, which mechanisms always occur together, which mechanisms are the dominant and which of them are rare. Also the paper presents the relation between the load and velocity with different failure mechanisms.