Estimation of static and kinetic friction coefficients for ice interacting with concrete surfaces

Concrete structures in ice prone environments experience abrasion due to ice-structure interaction, where the abrasion is attributed to friction. The sliding friction between concrete and ice is usually described as Coulomb or dry friction and although the physics of dry friction are believed to be well understood, the estimation of the static and kinetic friction coefficients for ice-concrete interaction remains a challenge. Data available in literature is ambiguous and the dependency of friction coefficients on parameters such as normal pressure and velocity is not clear. To contribute to the existing knowledge about friction coefficients and further investigate the influential factors, ice-concrete friction coefficients were estimated experimentally. With a specially designed set-up, stick-slip tests were performed by placing a cylindrical fresh-water ice sample, connected to a fixed structure by springs on either side, on a rotating slab of low-grade, smooth concrete. During the experiment, normal load (0.7-2.0 kg), spring stiffness (80-273 N/m) and concrete velocity (0.15-0.50 m/s) were varied. Following Coulomb’s laws of friction, the static and kinetic friction coefficients were obtained for the given parameters through displacement measurements. In addition, a simplified numerical stick-slip model was developed and validated based on the experimental data. In this paper, the dependency of the static and kinetic ice-concrete friction coefficients on normal load, spring stiffness and relative velocity is discussed based on test results and a comparison between the experiment and the numerical model is made to further identify the frictional behavior between concrete and ice.