On the relationship between effective and total pore space in sea ice

• Main Authors: Chris Petrich, Pat J. Langhorne
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2005
• Subjects: Sea ice
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.596.6689; http://www.physics.otago.ac.nz/research/ice/publications/PetrichLanghorne_poac05_final_pre.pdf

We present a Monte Carlo percolation model to estimate the relationship between effective (connected) pore space and total pore space in sea ice. The percolation model discriminates between regions of ice platelets and brine layers to typify a columnar crystal structure. It is found that the dimensions of the computational domain and the critical porosity are quantitatively consistent with measurements from the literature for sea ice. The cluster size distribution produced by the model is further similar to the inclusion size distribution observed in sea ice. Agreement and differences are discussed. BRINE LAYER MODEL We seek a relationship between total porosity ft and effective porosity fe using a simple Monte Carlo percolation model. Pockets, representing brine inclusions, are added into a domain, representing sea ice, and the relationship between total porosity and effective porosity is evaluated. Total porosity is the volume fraction of all inclusions of the material, while effective porosity is the pore space of the infinite cluster (Stauffer and Aharony, 1992), i.e. the volume of inclusions that are connected to the periphery of a sample of infinite size. Concepts of percolation theory have previously been applied to sea ice (Golden et al., 1998) to explain the origin of the critical porosity (percolation threshold) fc of sea ice, i.e. the porosity below that sea ice becomes virtually impermeable to fluid flow. Cox and Weeks (1975) report that no brine drainage from sea ice was observed for total porosities below fc = 0.05. However, common two and brine layer ice platelet a0 = ∆x