Quintero Cartagena, Angel L.

Profile Picture

Filters

20121
Reset filters

Settings

Citations

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Finite element analysis of unexpected failure of lake-ice under loads moving at critical velocity
    (2012-07) Quintero Cartagena, Angel L.; Goyal, Vijay K.; College of Engineering; Valentín, Ricky; Leonardi, Stefano; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Sharma, Anand D.
    Through this work we predicted the unexpected failures of lake-ice under the effect of moving loads at critical velocity using finite element analysis. The main motivation was to solve the unexpected failure of the lake-ice at the Lake Ladoga during a military operation of the World War II named “The Siege of Leningrad” where it remained unclear why the slowly moving and heavy trucks did not break the ice, while rapidly moving and lighter trucks did. One possibility could be explained using the concept of critical velocity, being this the focal point of this work. We developed beam and plate viscoelastically supported models and the results produced the exact solution when compared to metal structures with moving loads and similar geometric and boundary scenarios. We showed that indeed the trucks reached the critical velocity on their way back, being this the main cause of the unexpected lakeice failure; hence, resonance regimes were present causing instability and therefore loss of the structural stiffness of the lake-ice. Thus, we developed a novel approach to predict the unexpected lake-ice failure at critical velocity using the finite element analysis and we propose the first promising explanation for the “Road of life” at Lake Ladoga. The solved mystery is that the slowly moving heavy trucks did not break the lake-ice, but once the cargo was delivered, the lighter trucks drove back at higher speeds reaching velocities near the critical, creating unexpected failure of the lake-ice.