Experimental Study of Ice Jam Formation Dynamics
Publication: Journal of Cold Regions Engineering
Volume 20, Issue 4
Abstract
Ice jams pose a significant threat to human safety and property and represent one of the most dynamic of river ice processes. A key limitation in the advancement of knowledge of ice jam formation is the lack of quantitative data describing these dynamics, which is essential also for validation of advanced computational models. In this study, an experimental investigation of ice jam formation under steady carrier discharge was undertaken. Thus, unsteady effects were entirely due to the ice jam formation process itself. Quantitative data describing the variation in discharge, ice jam thickness, water level variation, and ice cover progression provides unprecedented data describing the dynamics of ice jam formation. While the processes of ice jam formation are indeed dynamic, the results of this investigation suggest that the analysis of ice jams formed under steady carrier flow conditions may be adequately handled by the usual steady flow ice jam stability relationships. The applicability of the popularly applied wide jam theory approach to modeling ice jams is further supported by this investigation.
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Acknowledgments
This research was funded through a scholarship and grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and through an Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship. This support is most gratefully acknowledged. The writers would also like to thank Perry Fedun and Sheldon Lovell for their technical support and the journal reviewers for their insightful suggestions, which improved the final manuscript.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Cold Regions Engineering
Volume 20 • Issue 4 • December 2006
Pages: 117 - 139
Copyright
© 2006 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 11, 2005
Accepted: Apr 24, 2006
Published online: Dec 1, 2006
Published in print: Dec 2006
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