VELOCITY AND IMPACT FORCE FOR SMALL, SIMULATED ICE BLOCKS IN AN EXPERIMENTAL RIVER

Upon spring river ice breakup, mobile river ice impacts river banks as it is transported downstream. Due to the complexities brought about by concurrent erosive processes (i.e. scour from ice and shear force of spring flooding) occurring in nature, it is currently unknown if forces exerted on banks by river ice impacts succeed that of the shear stress of flowing water. A physical model is applied towards the beginning to quantify the forces of river ice impacts on banks using video data captured during experiments and the OpenCV python library. In the experiments, a small meandering channel is constructed with controlled discharge producing a shear stress lower than that of the sand in which the channel is carved. To simplify the system further, ice is simulated using paraffin wax, which are added to the river one at a time. Using OpenCV, the capture video can be sliced into frames allowing further analysis between impact of outer river banks and ice. Preliminary results show that upscaling of experiments may be necessary to answer the initial research questions, eventually with study at field scales.