Construction and Experiment of the Harbin Ice Shell

Abstract

The city of Harbin is famous with its ice art and which attract the attention from the whole world. Ice shell is a kind of new architectural form in China which can be a suitable method for structure by using ice and snow-ice as structural material especially in cold regions. In this paper, an ice shell with span 9m and height 3.5 was completed to investigate the performance of this special structure under human loads and temperature. The results show that the ice shell maintains a bearing capacity under human loads due to the well-known mechanical behavior pf shell. However, the bearing capacity of the shell was largely depend on the variation of temperature. Furthermore, some rational suggests were given during the design and construct the ice shell. Finally, the works of this paper provides some material for the revision of ice code.