Uniaxial Strength and Deformation Properties of Machine-Made Snow
Publication: Journal of Cold Regions Engineering
Volume 29, Issue 4
Abstract
Snow as a construction material has been used for centuries, with igloos among the first examples. Each winter, snow and ice villages, buildings, and artwork are built in many places around the world. Machine-made snow manufactured by snow guns is commonly used for constructions made of snow. However, only a few basic studies on machine-made snow have been published. Knowledge based on experience and studies on natural snow constitute the basis for constructions made using snow and ice. Through material tests on machine-made snow used for construction, data on important physical and mechanical properties have been established that aim to improve and optimize safe constructions made from snow. Strength tests have been performed using two different qualities of machine-made snow. Specimens used for testing were cut out from one block of snow that had a coarse-grained structure with clusters of ice in the snow and from one block of snow with a fine-grained and homogeneous structure. The density for each tested snow sample was measured and strength tests were performed at different deformation rates to investigate the relationship between mechanical properties and deformation rate or strain rate. The load response curves achieved from the strength tests were used to evaluate compressive strength, Young’s modulus, and the residual modulus. The results show that compressive strength increases with increasing density. Increasing compressive strength with an increasing strain rate was also observed for fine-grained snow quality specimens, whereas no similar tendency was observed for coarse-grained snow. The residual modulus increased with an increasing strain rate up to a certain critical value for the fine-grained machine-made snow specimens. Regression analysis was used to investigate whether any dependence was observed between the calculated mechanical properties; no further relationship between the mechanical and the physical properties was noticed.
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Acknowledgments
The authors want to thank Ulf Stenman and Mats Pettersson, Luleå University of Technology (LTU), for support with the strength tests and ICEHOTEL for its support and for providing the material studied. Part of the tests was funded by the EU regional fund through the project SNOW AND ICE.
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© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 10, 2013
Accepted: Oct 10, 2014
Published online: Nov 18, 2014
Discussion open until: Apr 18, 2015
Published in print: Dec 1, 2015
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