STUDY ON VERTICAL ICE LOADS ACT ON PILE STRUCTURES

When ice sheets adfreeze to pile structures, vertical ice loads act on them as the water level changes due to the tides. The ice loads on structures grow greater with increased changes in water level. However, when the change in water level reaches a certain degree, the ice sheets fracture. The modes of failure are classified roughly as bending failure as adfreezing bond failure whereby the ice sheet is exfoliated from the surface of the structures. Furthermore, bending failure can be subdivided into two forms of cracking: radial cracking and circumferential cracking. We developed theoretical equations to give the vertical ice loads, which correspond to each mode of failure, and verified the equations through field experiment although a limited number of experiment was made in this research.