Field monitoring of river ice processes in the vicinity of ice control structures in the province of Quebec, Canada

Abstract

Over the past decades, a variety of ice control structures (ICS) have been designed and built, but to date, there has been no systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of these structures. To achieve this objective, first an understanding of the interaction between the different ice processes and the ICSs must be established. For this purpose, a total of four ICSs located in the province of Québec were monitored during the 2021-2022 winter. The results showed that the ice jam holding time could vary from 1.5 to 68.5 hours. The release of the jam was mechanically driven when the ratio of release to initiation Froude number was higher than one and was thermally driven when this ratio was lower than one and the water temperature increased between initiation and release. Also, as the ratio of the total pier spacings to upstream river width increased, the holding time decreased.