The ice wedge bending problem is important to study the ice-sloping structure interactions. A lot of experiments, analytical and numerical solutions have been pursuit in the past decades to study ice wedge bending related problems (e.g. beam tests, ice bearing capacity experiments, etc.). Nowadays, due to the advancement in computational mechanics, various numerical methods are at our disposal to
... [Show full abstract] simulate this process into detail according to certain material failure theory, e.g. the cohesive zone method. This paper tested four available numerical methods combined with the cohesive zone method in simulating this ice wedge bending scenario. These different numerical approaches include the traditional finite element method with element erosion technique, the cohesive element method (CEM), the discrete element method (DEM) with cohesive contacts and the extended finite element method (XFEM). Based on the simulations, it is found that all methods can reproduce the bending failure mode but the results are mesh-dependent due to the presence of material softening. Further information (e.g. strain rate effects) is needed for a more detailed material constitutive model so as to get a unique solution (i.e. mesh-independence). Apart from that, among all these numerical methods, the element erosion technique turns out to be the most efficient method; CEM is capable of capturing a stabilized ice breaking load but the whole structure appears to be softened with increasing cohesive element density; DEM with cohesive contact alleviate us from the structural softening problem, but it is too computationally expensive that only limited simulations and conclusions are made on it; XFEM is still at its early stage of development, so lots of disadvantages still remains in the market available implementations. However, it is shown in this study, different from those 920 Cohesive Zone Method Based Simulations of Ice Wedge Bending a Comparative Study of Element Erosion, CE discrete fracture approaches (CEM and DEM), that the crack propagation is free from the mesh bounding thus making this method very promising in the future.
