What are the dominant thermomechanical processes in the basal sediment layer of large ice sheets?

International audience The till-layer below the temperate base of an ice sheet is modelled as a saturated viscous solid-fluid mixture. Its solid mass grows by abrading material from the underlying rock-bed, and the water balance is affected by the draining of water into the rock-bed and melting of i...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Dell'Isola, Francesco, Hutter, Kolumban
Other Authors: Laboratorio Strutture e Materiali Intelligenti - Fondazione Tullio Levi-Civita, Cisterna di Latina, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Strutturale e Geotecnica, Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" = Sapienza University Rome, Institut für Mechanik, Technische Universität Darmstadt (TU Darmstadt)
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: HAL CCSD 1998
Subjects:
[SPI.MECA]Engineering Sciences [physics]/Mechanics [physics.med-ph]
Ice Sheet
Online Access:https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00498007
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00498007/document
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00498007/file/hutter-dellisola.pdf
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Summary:International audience The till-layer below the temperate base of an ice sheet is modelled as a saturated viscous solid-fluid mixture. Its solid mass grows by abrading material from the underlying rock-bed, and the water balance is affected by the draining of water into the rock-bed and melting of ice at the interface of the overlying ice sheet. This latter process is influenced by the dissipation due to the power expended by: (i) the stresses; and (ii) Darcy-type interaction forces; as well as (iii) the sliding of the ice over the till-layer and of the latter over the rock-bed. All these mechanisms are likely to influence the thermodynamics of the layer, a fact which is corroborated by a scaling analysis.

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