A laboratory test on construction of ice domes and their load-carrying capacity

Abstract

Ice domes will be useful as a shelter of depot and laboratory space without heating systems which will be constructed on the ice field in the Arctic or Antarctic. In this paper, efficacious use of ice domes is discussed for facilities of research camp in the Antarctic. Some experiments on construction technique of ice domes and their load-carrying capacity were carried out in a low temperature laboratory. It was confirmed experimentally that ice domes could be made by spraying water onto a spherically inflated membrane form under the condition of holding a temperature below -18℃. Mechanical property of artificial ice made in the laboratory was examined by some bending tests of simply supported ice beams so as to discuss a constitutive model of ice for numerical analysis. Load-carrying capacity and creep behavior of ice dome models were examined in the laboratory and analytical models of ice structure for a numerical procedure of the design were discussed and compared with the tests. A usefullness of elastic-plastic model for the mechanical behavior of ice structures in a short term loading and a convenience of Maxwell model for the long time creep of ice structure were confirmed in the discussion. These laboratory tests and analytical applications led to the first step of realization of the ice dome construction in the Antarctic.