Medium-scale experiment in consolidation of an artificial sea ice ridge in Van Mijenfjorden, Svalbard

• Published in: Cold Regions Science and Technology
• Main Authors: Salganik, Evgenii, Høyland, Knut Vilhelm, Shestov, Aleksey
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2021
• Subjects: Svalbard; Van Mijenfjorden; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/11250/2724604; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coldregions.2020.103194

This study characterizes a consolidation of undeformed level ice and ice ridges. Field investigations were performed in the Van Mijenfjorden, Svalbard for 66 days between February and May of 2017. The thickness and properties of the level ice that was used to make the ridge were measured, and thermistor-strings were installed in the ridge and the neighboring level ice. The ridge was visited four times for drilling and sampling. During our field experiment, the level ice (LI) grew from 50 to 99 cm, the consolidated layer (CL) grew up to 120 cm, and the ridge initial macroporosity was about 0.36. The experimental results provided enough information for accurate growth prediction and validation of ridge consolidation models. Two analytical resistive models and two-dimensional discretized numerical models are presented. All models need general met-ocean conditions and general ice physical properties. The ridge model includes the effect of the inhomogeneous top and bottom surfaces of the consolidated layer. The models were validated against the field measurements, and the further details of the analytical models were validated against the numerical model. The analytical resistive ridge model with convective atmospheric flux captures the relevant phenomena well and could be used for prediction of the consolidated layer thickness in probabilistic analysis of ice actions on structures. The model including the radiative terms predicted heat fluxes in level ice and ridge better than the convective model but required more input data. Vertical temperature profiles through the consolidated layer and further into respectively a void and an ice block may result in significantly different estimations of the consolidated layer thickness. The difference between fresh and saline ice growth is becoming significant only during the warming phase due to significant change of sea ice microporosity publishedVersion © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).