Experimental Study of Ice Jam Formation Dynamics

Abstract

Ice jams pose a significant threat to human safety and property and represent one of the most dynamic of river ice processes. A key limitation in the advancement of knowledge of ice jam formation is the lack of quantitative data describing these dynamics, which is essential also for validation of advanced computational models. In this study, an experimental investigation of ice jam formation under steady carrier discharge was undertaken. Thus, unsteady effects were entirely due to the ice jam formation process itself. Quantitative data describing the variation in discharge, ice jam thickness, water level variation, and ice cover progression provides unprecedented data describing the dynamics of ice jam formation. While the processes of ice jam formation are indeed dynamic, the results of this investigation suggest that the analysis of ice jams formed under steady carrier flow conditions may be adequately handled by the usual steady flow ice jam stability relationships. The applicability of the popularly applied wide jam theory approach to modeling ice jams is further supported by this investigation.