Viscoelastic response of floating ice plates under distributed or concentrated loads

Abstract

This paper deals with the elastic and viscoelastic deflections and stresses of non-homogeneous rectangular or infinite floating ice plates subjected to central distributed lateral loads, where the loading region is of rectangular shape, or concentrated loads. The analysis takes into account the variation of Young's modulus of ice in the thickness direction. The Rayleigh—Ritz procedure is used to obtain the elastic solution for the deflections and bending moments, while the viscoelastic solution is obtained from the elastic response using the correspondence principle. Closed form Bessel-type elastic and viscoelastic solutions are obtained for infinite floating ice plates. Comparisons are made between the time-dependent response of infinite and finite square floating ice plates.