Abstract
Abstract. Understanding the mechanical behavior of sea ice is the basis of applications of ice mechanics. Laboratory-scale work on saline ice has often involved dry, isothermal ice specimens due to the relative ease of testing. This approach does not address the fact that the natural sea ice is practically always floating in seawater and typically has a significant temperature gradient. To address this important issue, we have developed equipment and methods for conducting compressive loading experiments on floating laboratory-prepared saline ice specimens. The present effort describes these developments and presents the results of stress-controlled sinusoidal cyclic compression experiments. We conducted the experiments on dry, isothermal (−10 ∘C) ice specimens and on floating-ice specimens with a naturally occurring temperature gradient. The experiments involved ice salinities of 5 and 7 ppt, cyclic stress levels ranging from 0.04–0.12 to 0.08–0.25 MPa and cyclic loading frequencies of 0.001 to 1 Hz. The constitutive response and energy dissipation under cyclic loading were successfully analyzed using an existing physically based constitutive model for sea ice. The results highlight the importance of testing warm and floating-ice specimens and demonstrate that the experimental method proposed in this study provides a convenient and practical approach to perform laboratory experiments on floating ice.
Highlights
Climate change has led to an increased interest in polar sea areas and in ice behavior since accurate predictions of the evolution of the ice conditions are crucial for modeling the future climate
Understanding the mechanical behavior of sea ice is the basis of applications of ice mechanics
This paper studies the mechanical behavior of laboratoryprepared saline ice specimens under cyclic loading
Summary
Climate change has led to an increased interest in polar sea areas and in ice behavior since accurate predictions of the evolution of the ice conditions are crucial for modeling the future climate. In-depth understanding of the physical and mechanical properties of sea ice is required to develop tools for modeling future ice conditions and the related ice–ice and ice–wave interaction problems as well as to design safe and sustainable offshore structures (Dempsey, 2000; Feltham, 2008; Herman et al, 2019a, b; Lu and Løset, 2018; Lu et al, 2018; Ranta et al, 2017, 2018a, b; Tuhkuri and Polojärvi, 2018; Polojärvi et al, 2015; Voermans et al, 2019; Cheng et al, 2019; Li et al, 2015). This paper studies the mechanical behavior of laboratoryprepared saline ice specimens under cyclic loading This type of loading occurs in wave–ice and some ice–ice and ice– structure interaction problems – all important in the changing polar environment. The cyclic loading tests give insight into the fatigue of ice (Haskell et al, 1996; Bond and Langhorne, 1997; Langhorne et al, 1998; Mellor and Cole, 1981; Murdza et al, 2019; Schulson and Paul, 2009; Iliescu et al, 2017; Iliescu and Schulson, 2002)
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