Ice loads on the piers of Confederation Bridge, Canada

摘要

Confederation Bridge, across Canada's Northumberland Strait, is the longest bridge in the world over waters that are ice-covered for a portion of every year. The determination of the design ice forces was therefore an important element of the bridge design and of the assessment of the overall reliability of the bridge structure. The paper describes the process, and the information required, for the ice force determination. This includes: a description of the ice cover in the strait, the types of interaction possible with the piers of the bridge, the models used for the determination of the ice forces, the uncertainty associated with these parameters, and the resulting load spectrum.