Journal of Cold Regions Engineering

The aim of this article is to present and discuss the experience gained from a low-energy house in Sisimiut, Greenland, over the 5 years of operation since its inauguration in April 2005. The house was designed to test and present new low-energy technologies in the Arctic climate and to improve sustainability in Greenlandic buildings. The article presents some measurements, analyses, and comparisons of theoretical simulations and some steps that were taken to improve the house with impacts on energy consumption. The results include energy consumption, temperatures, and solar heating production. Also presented are the results of several investigations carried out in the house, such as blower-door tests and inspection of the ventilation system. The initial target for the heating demand of the house was that it should be restricted to $80\mathrm{kWh}/({\mathrm{m}}^2·\mathrm{a})$, but in reality it has varied over the past 5 years from 139 to $150\mathrm{kWh}/({\mathrm{m}}^2·\mathrm{a})$. Currently the house is on the way to presenting a good energy solution, and the annual energy consumption for heating in 2010 was $90\mathrm{kWh}/{\mathrm{m}}^2$.

To effectively fight snow storms in the challenging funding environment, many maintenance agencies in North America have started to produce their own anti-icing liquids, instead of procuring commercial anti-icers. This work demonstrates a systematic approach to collaborative, data-driven, and multicriteria decision making by conducting a set of laboratory tests to assess twenty blended chloride-based anti-icing formulations. The laboratory data were then used to establish predictive models correlating the multiple design parameters with the anti-icer performance and effects or with an anti-icer composite index. The authors used artificial neural networks for modeling and examined anti-icer performance (characteristic temperature and ice-melting capacity at 30 and 15°F ($-1.1$ and −9.4°C), respectively) and effects (splitting tensile strength of concrete after ten freeze-thaw cycles and corrosivity to mild steel) as a function of the formulation design. The anti-icer composite index was calculated for four different user priority scenarios (cost-first, performance-first, impacts-first, or a balanced approach), each of which placed a different set of decision weights on various target attributes. Three-dimensional response surfaces were then constructed to illustrate such predicted correlations and to guide the direction for formulation improvements.

Relationships between seismic site classification and surficial geology for the city of Fairbanks, Alaska, for both frozen (winter) and unfrozen (summer) surface conditions are investigated in this article. The work is based on 59 shear wave velocity (${\mathrm{V}}_{\mathrm{s}}$) profiles collected using the spectral analysis of surface waves (SASW) method. Forty-three ${\mathrm{V}}_{\mathrm{s}}$ profiles were collected during the summer when the ground surface was fully thawed, and 16 ${\mathrm{V}}_{\mathrm{s}}$ profiles were collected by reoccupying some of the test locations during fully frozen winter ground surface conditions. Relationships between mean ${\mathrm{V}}_{\mathrm{s}}$ over the top 30 m of the subsurface (${\mathrm{V}}_{\mathrm{s}30\mathrm{m}}$) and surficial geologic units in Fairbanks were developed, permitting estimates of seismic site classification throughout the city for both frozen and unfrozen conditions. Much of Fairbanks was determined to have been founded on NEHRP Site Class D material when unfrozen. When frozen, the ${\mathrm{V}}_{\mathrm{s}}$ of the near-surface material increased significantly (by 700% on average). However, this drastic increase in stiffness was typically limited to the top 1 to 2 m of the subsurface and only resulted in an increase in site class from NEHRP D to NEHRP C at three of the 16 sites retested during the winter.