Flexural Strength of Sand‐Reinforced Ice

Abstract

By reinforcing ice with readily available alluvium, an economic building material for remote Arctic locations may be obtained. Three‐point bending tests are performed on ice reinforced with sand ($\sim 80\%$ sand by weight) at three test temperatures ($-5°\text{,}$ $-10°\text{,}$ and $-20°C$ ). All samples fail in a brittle manner. Accordingly, a Weibull analysis of the results is performed. The test results show that both the mean bending strength and the Weibull modulus increase with decreasing temperature. This behavior may be explained by considering the variations of both unfrozen water content of the samples and the fracture toughness of the ice matrix with temperature. A simple model, based on failure arising from the propagation of flaws within the ice matrix, is presented, and it shows good agreement with the experimental results. Further work is needed to refine the model to account quantitatively for the variation of unfrozen water content with temperature.