Destroying LOFAR — Load #5

Okay... this is getting serious. Would we actually be able to damage a tile with snow? Undeterred (so far) we press on with another load.



The load is piled on to the tile



And we are now well over three-and-a-half tonnes with no ill-effect.



In fact, the mountain of snow is now so high, that it is getting difficult to reach the top to dump more snow (we didn't expect this eventuality). As a result, we decided to spread the snow out a little bit, to allow us to put even more loading on it. This was done by getting the digger to push the summit of our HBA-snow-mountain out to cover more entire of the tile surface.



This work was the first time we noticed any deformation. As the digger pushed the snow across the pile, there was a lateral movement of the tile, where the base remained fixed to the frame, but the top of the tile would move laterally as the snow was pushed. This lateral movement was small, but it was distinct and we thought for a moment that the vertical loading capacity of the tile would be fine, but that the tile would concede when subjected to a shearing force.

But no.

The tile remained intact... and we went off to get more snow. The score now stands are:

Load   Mass    Total
#1   400kg    400kg
#2   550kg    950kg
#3   950kg   1900kg
#4  1050kg   2950kg
#5   850kg   3800kg