Modeling Coulombic failure of sea ice with leads

Wilchinsky, A. V. and Feltham, D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2289-014X (2011) Modeling Coulombic failure of sea ice with leads. Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans, 116 (C8). C08040. ISSN 0148-0227 doi: 10.1029/2011JC007071

Abstract/Summary

[1] Sea ice failure under low-confinement compression is modeled with a linear Coulombic criterion that can describe either fractural failure or frictional granular yield along slip lines. To study the effect of anisotropy we consider a simplified anisotropic sea ice model where the sea ice thickness depends on orientation. Accommodation of arbitrary deformation requires failure along at least two intersecting slip lines, which are determined by finding two maxima of the yield criterion. Due to the anisotropy these slip lines generally differ from the standard, Coulombic slip lines that are symmetrically positioned around the compression direction, and therefore different tractions along these slip lines give rise to a nonsymmetric stress tensor. We assume that the skewsymmetric part of this tensor is counterbalanced by an additional elastic stress in the sea ice field that suppresses floe spin. We consider the case of two leads initially formed in an isotropic ice cover under compression, and address the question of whether these leads will remain active or new slip lines will form under a rotation of the principal compression direction. Decoupled and coupled models of leads are considered and it is shown that for this particular case they both predict lead reactivation in almost the same way. The coupled model must, however, be used in determining the stress as the decoupled model does not resolve the stress asymmetry properly when failure occurs in one lead and at a new slip line.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/34581
Identification Number/DOI	10.1029/2011JC007071
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Uncontrolled Keywords	Coulombic;anisotropic;failure;sea ice
Publisher	American Geophysical Union
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