Studies of ice physical properties in Russia and USSR (late XIX^thcentury — 1940). Ice elasticity and viscosity

Abstract

The paper deals with studies of ice elasticity and viscosity conducted in Russia and the USSR from the late XIXth century till 1940. Research of these important characteristics requires special-purpose instruments of sufficient precision to measure small deformations. It was a serious challenge impeding further investigations. B.P. Veinberg was the first in Russia to examine these properties in 1905–1906 using an instrument specially designed and manufactured for this purpose. In the course of his studies, he obtained data on the ice internal friction coefficient and shear modulus. This research was of purely academic nature and was not meant to include practical issues. Around the same time the elastic and viscous properties of the ice cover started to be examined by researchers involved in the construction and maintenance of railway river crossings. Their efforts focused on ice deflections under load, which they studied using standard devices applied in railway transport and bridge construction. The need to determine the elastic limit emerged only in the 1920s in connection with the first mathematical models of railway crossings developed by B.N. Sergeyev and S.A. Bernstein. They attempted to infer the elasticity modulus from ice deflections measured at railway crossings. In the Soviet period, studies of the elastic and viscous properties of ice were almost abandoned. The most interesting investigations were carried out by V.N. Pinegin in 1922–1925. In the late 1930s, V.K. Maklashin conducted experiments to determine the ice compressibility coefficient. However, his work contained a lot of major inaccuracies, which raised some doubts as to the results he obtained. Little research done in Russia on ice elasticity and viscosity can be attributed to the lack of practical interest in the data regarding these ice properties.