| Summary: | In determining the gravity driven flow of a glacier or ice sheet which obeys Glen's flow law, previous methods have predicted infinite longitudinal stress at the glacier's surface. This physically unacceptable occurrence is due to a break-down in the mathematical methods used to obtain the solution. Using the method of matched asymptotic expansions, the solution valid in the near-surface region is determined. The size of the near-surface or boundary layer region is found to be of order δ1/3, where δ = h0/L is the assumed small ratio of the characteristic thickness and length of the ice sheet. The solution is obtained for ice sheets on both a steep and gentle base slope. The stress field in the near-surface region is obtained and we find that the boundary layer does not significantly affect the surface velocities or the glacier profile. Made available in DSpace on 2021-11-04T16:25:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 TAM454-UILU-ENG-82-6002.pdf: 27694098 bytes, checksum: ecd4b8bc0b174e1ace35d9a61f36b5e9 (MD5) license.txt: 4802 bytes, checksum: 58353f9dd6876860dd5221f3d7872a95 (MD5) Previous issue date: 1982-09 National Science Foundation 82/09
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