Size effects on the in-situ compressive behavior of first-year sea ice

Size or scale effects play a significant role in the compressive behavior of ice, which has been an under-evolved topic until now. To investigate and provide a clear description of the size or scale effect of ice in compression, a series of in-situ uniaxial compression tests was carried out on first-year sea ice in the Bohai Sea. The experimental results reveal significant size effect on both the peak uniaxial compressive strength and the corresponding critical ductile-to-brittle transition strain rate. The measured data fitting result of the size effect on ice compressive strength (under unconfined conditions) is close with Bazant's size effect law, but with a small lower power exponent (-0.57). The critical ductile-to-brittle transition strain rate results behaved an almost inversely proportional decreasing term with the increase of sample volume.