| Résumé | Winter roads are seasonal routes that only exist in the winter – they run over land and over frozen water surfaces (lakes, rivers). The over-ice segments are particularly vulnerable to a warming climate. Ice reinforcement for the purpose of sustaining higher loads, and/or for a longer yearly operational lifespan, may be seen as an effective means to remediate weak links along a winter road, but that technique is not well known. A review of documented cases is presented in which reinforced ice was used in full-scale scenarios, with information on construction and deployment procedures. Retrieval of reinforcement, after the winter road season is over, is another aspect that warrants attention in a planning scheme. A distinction is made between the concepts of ice ‘failure’, linked with ‘first crack’, and ‘breakthrough’, which is a complex phenomenon involving a sequence of radial and circumferential cracks, when a vehicle breaks partly or completely through the ice. Determining the bearing capacity of reinforced ice is seen as an outstanding challenge in being able to implement a safe and effective reinforcement procedure. The solution would be to perform real-world, fully instrumented ice testing, and most importantly, allow for breakthrough to be achieved, so as to capture the full response and assess the ultimate resistance of the ice cover. |
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