CASE STUDY
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN – MADISON
The deployable Blue Ice Drill Tent was an essential shelter created to help engineers and scientists in their quest to measure atmospheric changes and drill for the Earth’s oldest ice samples in one of her most unforgiving environments, Antarctica.
The tent was commissioned through The Space Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who’s field operations were based out of Casey Station in Antarctica. The creation of a mobile, lightweight, durable and insulative tent to encapsulate the researches’ drilling rig and equipment enabled the research team to not only meet their
DEPLOYABLE ICE DRILL TENT
goals for collecting ice core samples, but to far exceed them. The project’s main objective was to provide an environment that was comfortable enough for them to continue their work despite the severe unpredictable weather with blizzards and 60-plus knot winds.
Fabricon designed and fabricated the tent using a split bale ring to support and provide tension to the fabric from the top of the tent membrane. The fabric was suspended to two opposing symmetrical arches meeting at the bottom center of the membrane, supported by two smaller door arches, forming a conical hypar (hyperbola) form with wings. Guy ropes were attached to points on the tent’s membrane and bale ring. These ropes were then staked down into the ice, and snow piled onto a large exterior skirt providing additional ballast and structural stability.
