Flexural Strength and Fracture Toughness of Urea Model Ice

In many tests of ice-structure interactions performed using physical modeling techniques, the ice can fail in bending, flexure or by tensile cracking. Because of this, it is necessary to know and understand the flexural and fracture toughness properties of the model ice used in the test in order to be able to better interpret the results. In spite of this, to date there has been only a limited number of tests to measure the flexural behavior and the parameters influencing the flexural response of the model ice. The fracture toughness of model ice has not been measured. In this paper, the flexural behavior and fracture toughness of both freshwater ice and sea ice are reviewed in order to establish the prototype values and behavior which must be scaled for the model test. The results of a series of tests on the flexural properties of the model ice are presented and discussed in terms of the parameters which influence the strength including warmup time and temperature, test type (cantilever or simple beam), loading rate and loading direction. The fracture toughness of the model ice has been measured and the results are presented and compared to the prototype values for freshwater ice and sea ice. A comparison is made to assess the accuracy of the scalability of these properties of the ice.