Supplementary material from "Modelling and simulation of brinicle formation" ...

• Main Authors: Gómez-Lozada, Felipe, Andrés del Valle, Carlos, David Jiménez-Paz, Julián, Lazarov, Boyan S., Galvis, Juan
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: The Royal Society 2023
• Subjects: Ocean Engineering; Arctic; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.6879619.v1; https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_Modelling_and_simulation_of_brinicle_formation_/6879619/1

Below the Arctic sea ice, under the right conditions, a flux of icy brine flows down into the sea. The icy brine has a much lower fusion point and is denser than normal seawater. As a result, it sinks while freezing everything around it, forming an ice channel called a brinicle (also known as ice stalactite). In this paper, we develop a mathematical model for this phenomenon, assuming cylindrical symmetry. The fluid is considered to be viscous and quasi-stationary. The heat and salt transport are weakly coupled to the fluid motion and are modelled with the corresponding conservation equations, accounting for diffusive and convective effects. Finite-element discretization is employed to solve the coupled system of partial differential equations. We find that the model can capture the general behaviour of the physical system and generate brinicle-like structures while also recovering dendrite composition, which is a physically expected feature aligned with previous experimental results. This represents the ...