Pressure ridge ice gouge morphology and the development of a representative physical ice keel model for the Beaufort sea

• Main Author: Park, Timothy L.G.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Memorial University of Newfoundland 2012
• Subjects: Beaufort Sea
• Online Access: https://research.library.mun.ca/11201/; https://research.library.mun.ca/11201/1/Park_TimothyLG.pdf

Ice gouge experiments have been conducted by numerous authors since the early 1970s. A common theme in nearly all experiments is the use of an idealized prismatic wedge shape model to represent the keel of an iceberg or pressure ridge. In the case of icebergs, it is well known that keel morphology is highly variable. However, for pressure ridge ice keels a common morphology has been recognized. An in-depth study of extreme gouge features in five multi-beam bathymetric datasets, from the Beaufort Sea, has led to the development of a three-dimensional representative model of an ice keel. A qualitative 1g scale model test comparing the representative three-dimensional model to a traditional prismatic wedge was conducted using Beaufort Sea clay. The experiment used a model pipeline to compare the loads from a representative keel to that of an idealized prismatic wedge. The three-dimensional representative model resulted in a lower force/deflection on the pipeline when compared to the traditional prismatic wedge shape model. However, the shape of the representative model keel resulted in proportionately higher stresses being transmitted through the soil than the simple prismatic model.