Exact and numerical solutions for stokes flow in glaciers

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2012 We begin with an overview of the fluid mechanics governing ice flow. We review a 1985 result due to Balise and Raymond giving exact solutions for a glaciologically-relevant Stokes problem. We extend this result by giving exact formulas for the press...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Mitchell, William H.
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: 2012
Subjects:
Glaciology
Glaciers
Stokes flow
Fairbanks
glaciers
Alaska
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/11122/8316
Description
Summary:Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2012 We begin with an overview of the fluid mechanics governing ice flow. We review a 1985 result due to Balise and Raymond giving exact solutions for a glaciologically-relevant Stokes problem. We extend this result by giving exact formulas for the pressure and for the basal stress. This leads to a theorem giving a necessary condition on the basal velocity of a gravity-induced flow in a rectangular geometry. We describe the finite element method for solving the same problem numerically. We present a concise implementation using FEniCS, a freely-available software package, and discuss the convergence of the numerical method to the exact solution. We describe how to fix an error in a recent published model.

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