Size Effects In Mesoscale Mechanical Testing Of Snow

Abstract

Snow is a naturally-occurring, heterogeneous material whose interactions with humans make it desirable for analysis as a geotechnical engineering material. In this study, clean, undisturbed, natural snows of two common types were collected in and around Fairbanks, Alaska and subjected to laboratory testing, and the results were compiled and analyzed. Three types of tests--flat pin indentation, unconfined compression, and cone penetration--were carried out while varying size parameters, and size effects were observed and studied. From flat-pin indentation testing, it was observed that first peak indentation strength initially fell exponentially with increasing indenter cross-sectional area, with the exponent averaging 0.84. Furthermore, the strength eventually rose to a plateau value, and the compression strength of snow could be calculated from this plateau value. This plateau, too, initially depended exponentially on the pin cross-sectional area for smaller pins. From unconfined compression testing, it was observed that as cross-sectional area of a flat pin indenter increased, plateau strength eventually reached that value found from unconfined compression testing. Furthermore, initial strength, plateau strength, and energy absorption density all increased linearly with increasing aspect ratio. From cone penetration testing, it was found that empirical values of snow strength may be obtained on both a micromechanical and macromechanical scale using cone penetration. Size effects, were also observed--smaller cone diameters and larger cone included angles yielded larger values for apparent snow strength. Some of the mechanisms behind all of these size effects are explainable from theory; others must be regarded for now as empirical in nature. In both cases, the results are quite reliable descriptors for a natural material, and may be safely interpolated from.