A continuum visco-elasto brittle model for sea ice with a granular transition

Sea ice is a complex material that exhibits various mechanical behaviors depending on its degree of fragmentation. In compact and largely intact regions, it behaves as a cohesive, damageable solid, a regime that is reasonably well represented by continuum visco-elasto-brittle models (Dansereau et al., 2016; Rampal et al., 2019, Olason et al., 2022). In contrast, where it becomes highly fractured and loose – such as within large linear kinematic features - it behaves as a frictional, decohesive granular media, a regime that is challenging to describe within a purely continuum framework. To better capture the transition between the two regimes in a visco-elasto-brittle framework, we introduce additional physical ingredients: a damage-dependence of the Poisson’s ratio, a damage-dependence of the cohesion and a friction criterion.

We present results of a simple biaxial compression test in which each of these ingredients are included or not and demonstrate the strong interaction between their effect, highlighting the necessity of introducing them simultaneously to accurately reproduce the brittle to granular transition within sea ice.