FrostLine

Cold-region civil & structural engineering

Engineering calculators built for the North.

Frost depth, snow & ice loads, seismic, and the everyday structural checks — fast, interactive, and grounded in cold-region practice. Free to use, no sign-up.

Open the calculators Why cold-region?

Preliminary estimates for education — not a substitute for a licensed engineer.

Cold-region tools

The differentiators — where Alaska and the subarctic change the math.

Frost Depth Modified Berggren Estimate design frost penetration depth from the air-freezing index and soil properties — the signature cold-region foundation question. Snow Load ASCE 7-22 Ground snow → flat-roof → sloped-roof snow load, with representative Alaska ground-snow values built in. Seismic Base Shear ASCE 7-16 Design spectral accelerations and equivalent-lateral-force base shear — essential in the most seismically active state in the U.S. Frost Heave Susceptibility USACE F1–F4 Classify a soil's frost-heave susceptibility (USACE groups F1–F4 with the Casagrande screen) from its gradation.

Structural essentials

The classic checks you reach for on every project.

Beam Check Statics Simply-supported beam moment, shear, deflection and bending stress — with an optional allowable-stress check. Unit Converter Reference Fast conversions across the units engineers actually use — force, pressure/stress, moment, distributed load, and more.

Why a cold-region toolkit?

National calculators assume national conditions. But at high latitude the governing loads are different: frost drives foundations metres deep, ground snow loads swing from 25 to 200+ psf between towns, and Alaska is the most seismically active state in the country. Generic tools quietly get these wrong.

FrostLine bakes in the methods and the local data — air-freezing index, representative Alaska ground-snow values, USACE frost-susceptibility groups — so the first number you get is already in the right neighborhood.

  • 6 calculators and growing
  • Method & references shown on every tool
  • Alaska data built in, not bolted on
  • Free — built to be useful first