A broad-spectrum constitutive modeling technique applied to saline ice

Abstract

The constitutive behavior of lab-grown saline ice subjected to isothermal, uniaxial tensile loadings is discussed. A rectangular plate specimen of S2 columnar saline ice was subjected to a uniform tensile stress perpendicular to the long axis of the column structure. This loading was selected to represent the stress field which occurs in the plane of natural ice covers under tension. The uniaxial stress state was applied with a recently developed, modified Reversed Direct Stress device. Two successive load histories were applied – creep-recovery cycles and monotonic stress ramps. A broad-spectrum, nonlinear viscoelastic modeling approach is used to develop a constitutive model of the strain response. Each parameter of the model is evaluated from the measured ice response to the creep-recovery loadings. The model provides an accurate representation of the experimental data with a delayed elastic compliance function in time power law form (t _n ,n=$\frac{1}{3}$) and a nonlinear stress exponent (σ _q ,q =$\frac{3}{2}$). Finally, the model is used to predict the strain response of the ice to the monotonic ramp loadings with good results.