This book on Advances in Cold-Region Thermal Engineering and Sciences consists of peer-reviewed articles and reviews presented as lectures at the Sixth InternationalSymposium on Thermal Engineering and Sciences for Cold Regions, held at the campus of the Darmstadt University of Technology,Darmstadt, Germany, August 22 - 25, 1999, and is the sixth in a series of speciality meetings on the title topic: 1st, Edmonton, Canada, 1987; 2nd, Sapporo, Japan, 1989; 3rd, Fairbanks, USA, 1991; 4th, Hanover, USA, 1993; 5th, Ottawa, Canada, 1996. These symposia are not under the auspices of any particular society or organisation but, rather, are a gathering of independent investigators with a broad interest in thermal aspects in cold regions. The exploration and development of natural resources in the Arctic regions face many unique engineering and environmental problems, including those related to the climate and global change. Arctic or cold environments provide many unique freezing or melting phenomena, both in technological applications and in the natural context, involving water, air, soil, entire ice sheets (such as Antarctica),biological systems and much more. Processes of heat and mass transfer involving phase transitions or phase change interfaces are of basic importance to cold regions engineering design, construction and operation, but also to geotechnicians, geologists, climatologists, cryologists (ice and snow scientists),etc. The approaches are multidisciplinary from descriptiveto deductive, often involving simultaneous knowledge of natural scientists, engineers, physicists and mathematicians together. The purpose of the symposium was to provide a forum for the review and dissemination of recent scientific and technical information related to all aspects of thermal engineering and sciences in cold regions. The topics that are particularly treated, may be headed as follows:
- Ice formation and decay
- Heat conduction with phase change
- Convection with freezing and melting
- Phase change in porous media
- Thermal properties at low temperature
- Frost heave and permafrost
- Climate impact in cold regions
- Icing on structures
- Ice as a structural material