A study was carried out to clarify the effect of specimen-volume upon the tensile strength of snow. For the purpose, unconfined tensile strength of snow was measured by means of apparatus for uniaxial tensile experiment. Specimens used were fine-grained old snow of density ranging from 340 to 360 kg·m
-3. The test-temperature was -10°C. Volumes of cylindrical specimens for the tests were prepared to the following four specifications : 2.4×10
-4, 4.2×10
-4, 1.1×10
-3 and 2.9×10
-3m
3, respectively. Ratio of height to diameter of the specimen was 2.5.
It was found, in the experimental results, that the relations between the strength and the volume were as follows : In the case of brittle fracture occurring (when the strain rate was 5.3×10
-4 s
-1),
S= (3.48×10
4) ·
V-0.096and in another case of ductile fracture occurring (when the strain rate was 2.2×10
-5s
-1),
S= (5.32×10
4) ·
V-0.106where,
S is strength (N·m
-2) and
V is specimen-volume (m
3). The relations indicated that the change in strength with volume was only about 20% in the range of volumes used in the experiments, although the volume increased up to about 12 times.
In previous experiments, scatter in data of tensile strength was about 2 orders of magnitude. From the present results, the reasons could be attributed to damage caused in forming the specimen, to differences of experimental methods, and to the snow qualities used for tests rather than to the effect of specimen-volume.
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