Static ice loads on a dam in a small Norwegian reservoir

Abstract

Ice loads on a concrete dam have been calculated from stress measurements in Taraldsvikfossen Reservoir, a small reservoir in Narvik, Norway, during three winter seasons. Ice thickness was in the range of 0.5 to 1.0 m, and both thermal ice loads were observed and water level fluctuations up to 30 cm were observed when the ice cover froze to the spillway. The maximum global line load measured was 60 to 90 kN/m, in line with current design guidelines in Norway. Consistent with earlier reports, line loads were not evenly distributed along the dam face. A thermal line load model was able to reproduce the approximate shape and magnitude of many line load peaks even when the measured vertical stress profile could not be reproduced by the model. The result add to an extremely small body of data in Norway and motivate investigations in other pars of the country with expected higher or lower ice loads.