Measurement of the Deformation of Ice in a Tunnel at the Foot of an Ice Fall

Abstract

AbstractDuring the Cambridge Austerdalsbre Expedition 1955, a tunnel was dug horizontally into the ice at the foot of a large ice fall, and its subsequent movements were surveyed. The axis of the tunnel was rotating very fast, as might be expected from the change in surface slope under the ice fall, but as well as this the tunnel was being bent, i.e. the tunnel axis was an active anticline. As the local surface of the glacier above the tunnel was convex, this bending was tending to increase the convexity, and as it is in this region that waves form across the glacier under the ice fall this observation is interpreted as showing that the wave ogives are actually being formed in the ice surrounding the tunnel. The distances between pegs in the tunnel walls were also measured. There was a compressive strain occurring along the tunnel axis (i.e. the tunnel was decreasing in length) and the tunnel was also closing far more rapidly than would be predicted from the weight of overlying ice alone. These two observations suggest that a large compressive stress is acting in the glacier in a longitudinal direction. Measurements on surface stakes, though not of the same accuracy as the internal measurements, confirmed these predictions, and also allow the strain rate tensor to be estimated. From this the magnitude of the stresses can be computed, and the longitudinal compressive stress is estimated to be about 3 bars. Observations of the banding on the walls of the tunnel showed that the fine bands were within 10° of being perpendicular to the maximum compressive stress.