Methods for Estimating Flow Discharge in Ice-Covered Channels

River ice formation is common in high-latitude areas, where it significantly impacts the accuracy of river flow measurements. The most commonly used method to solve the ice-covered channel flow measurement problem is to combine physical boundary conditions, which effectively reduces the large amount of work required for measuring flow in frozen channels, especially for hard-to-obtain flow characteristic data. Through theoretical analysis, this study proposes a general formula applicable to flow discharge prediction in ice-covered channels. It is unaffected by the shape of the channel and somewhat unifies the flow prediction formulas for ice-covered channels. Two simplified flow discharge prediction formulas are proposed based on the general formula. Experimental data from the literature are collected to verify the applicability of the general formula and the two simplified formulas, which are compared with the Lotter, Sabaneev, Larsen, and Pavlovskiy formulas. The results show that the proposed general formula and the two simplified formulas are more accurate in estimating flow in ice-covered channels compared to traditional formulas.