A Random Pore Model of sea ice for predicting its mechanical properties
Zhi Zong
Abstract
Sea ice contains gas and brine pockets arising from its special growth environments.The mechanical properties are strongly dependent on the microstructure of sea ice, the most prominent of which is described by its porosity. In this paper a Random Pore Model (RPM) is proposed, the basic assumption of which is that sea ice is made of pure ice sheet embedded with a lot of randomly distributed pores of random sizes. Monte Carlo method is then employed to generate random pore field. Simple numerical tests show that there exists upper limit value for porosity, which is close to 0.61. Simple numerical tests are then performed to find the dependence of tensile and compressive strengths of sea ice on porosity. The results turn out to be in good agreement with experimental results. This is followed by further studies on the effect of porosity on mechanical properties of sea ice, such as elastic modulus, Poisson's ratio, failure strains. The mechanical properties of sea ice at low porosity and scale effect are also discussed.