Abstract
The construction of a prefabricated ice rink has recently attracted considerable interest owing to its detachability, short building period, and high cooling efficiency, among other benefits. Characterizing the compressive properties of an artificial ice sheet is crucial in the design, operation, and maintenance stages of the rink. Several uniaxial compressive tests were conducted in the present work to better understand the mechanical behavior of artificial ice in winter sports rinks. The artificial ice was produced using homemade equipment to simulate the real ice-making conditions in the rink. Comprehensive conditions such as strain rate, ice temperature, ice-making method, water quality, air temperature and humidity were considered in the experiments. The obtained results show that the compressive behavior of artificial ice is considerably affected by the strain rate and ice temperature, and slightly affected by the ice-making method and water quality, whereas the effects of air temperature and humidity are inconclusive. The identified range of strain rate for ductile-brittle transition was within 8.3 × 10−5 s–1 and 8.3 × 10−4 s−1, in which the strength reaches a maximum value at 1.7 × 10–4 s−1. The influencing factors on the compressive strength and effective modulus were analyzed based on the experimental observations, and fitting functions were established to describe the relationships. The results of this study will hopefully provide a reference for the design and optimization of ice rinks, particularly for prefabricated rinks.
Highlights
In the last few years, with the development of ice sports, there has been a growing interest in the construction of prefabricated rinks [1,2,3]
Using the d–1.5 scaling, the transitional strain rates obtained by Batto and Schulson [40] can be scaled as 1.2 × 10−4 s−1 for grain size of 6.6 mm, and it can be found that our obtained transitional strain rate at −8.5 ◦C is consistent with the scaled strain rate from Batto and Schulson [40]
The compressive properties of artificial ice in rink were studied through a series of uniaxial compression experiments
Summary
In the last few years, with the development of ice sports, there has been a growing interest in the construction of prefabricated rinks [1,2,3]. The ice sheet of the conventional rink is directly built on the rigid concrete surface whereas the ice sheet in a prefabricated rink, is supported using a foam insulation material, which has an extremely low elastic modulus. It has been concluded that the ice sheet in a prefabricated rink undergoes bending failure because of the different supporting conditions of the ice sheet [4]. A fundamental understanding of the mechanical behavior of artificial ice in the rink is required to prevent the artificial ice sheet failure in service. For the artificial ice as a building material in winter sports rinks, the mechanical properties remain unclear
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