A shear tester is a simple
in situ device for indexing shear strength. The measurement is sensitive to frame size and geometry, rate-of-pull, and normal load on a shear plane.Several kinds of shear testers were used to measure the shear strength of snow cover. Comparing different types of testers, distributions of observed values agree well with each other. The effect of normal load on shear strength is not significant for most types of snow except for inadhesive snow. On dry snow(new snow, lightly compacted snow, compacted snow and granular snow), shear strength is revealed to be a power function of dry density. The strength of dry granular snow is smaller than that of other types of dry snow. Wet snow shows low shear strength compared to dry snow.Shear strength decreases with increasing water content;its decrease rate is expressed by an exponential function of volumetric water content. Thus, shear strength of snowσmay be formulated asσ=
Kρ
dry2.91e-0.235θ, where ρ
dry is dry density, θ is volumetric water content and
K is a constant which is experimentally determined by the snow type. Values of
K are respectively equal to 9.40×10
-4 and 4.97×10
-4 on granular snow and new, lightly compacted and compacted snow.
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