Sea Ice Experiments at Hamburg Ship Model Basin (HSVA)
30 July 2017
Field-scale laboratory experiments on artificially grown sea ice were undertaken in May 2017 by an international team of researchers at Hamburg Ship Model Basin (HSVA).

Friction experiments which were conducted in the Large Ice Model Basin (LIMB) were double-direct shear in nature and involved pushing a mobile, floating ice block that was bound on two sides by regions of ice rubble and subject to a normal force. Tests explored kinetic friction and the memory effects of friction. The latter involved recording the force required to reinitiate movement of the middle block after a certain "hold time", a period ranging from 1 second to 3 hours where the floating block was held motionless. These tests were repeated with four different types of ice rubble - two sizes each of cylindrical ice disks, and diamond shaped ice pieces.
Thank you to the team members who participated in the project and were integral to its success: Ben Lishman (London South Bank University), Kaj Riska (Total), Eleanor Bailey (C-CORE, Canada), Aleksey Marchenko (UNIS, Svalbard) and Sammie Buzzard (CPOM, UCL). A huge thanks also to the ice tank crew at HSVA for their hospitality, technical and scientific support and the professional execution of the test programme in the Research Infrastructure ARCTECLAB. The work described here was supported by the European Community's Horizon2020 Research and Innovation Programme through the grant to HYDRALAB-PLUS, Contract no. 654110.
For more information on Hydralab+ projects and facilities: www.hydralab.eu/ Relevant publications: Scourfield, S., Sammonds, P., Lishman, B. and Marchenko, A., 2015. The effect of ice rubble on ice-ice sliding.