Medium-scale consolidation of artificial ice ridge – Part II: Fracture properties investigation by a splitting test

Sea ice’s fracture properties are in general difficult to measure and there is still on-going debate on the proper way to conduct valid measurements. Among many controversy fracture test conditions, the size of the test specimen and the loading rate were often raised. Given the circumstance, a series of large-scale sea ice’s fracture tests were performed in Svalbard over the past few years from 2015 to 2018. As our test procedures get more matured and with existing test equipment, we performed a similar ‘ice ridge splitting’ test in 2017. The mediumscale ice ridge was prepared in February 2017; and in its course of consolidation, its associated morphological and mechanical properties (i.e., compressive strength in vertical and horizontal directions) were measured. At the end of this test, the ice ridge was split to introduce a global failure. In this ice ridge splitting experiment, we measured the splitting force history and the Crack Mouth Opening Displacement (CMOD) was derived according to Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM) theory. Aside from other physical and mechanical properties of this medium-scale ice ridge reported in the other associated paper, this paper (i.e., Part II of this series of papers) shall focus on its final fracture test and offer some insights into this ice ridge’s fracture properties. Based on the calculation, we found the fracture energy of the artificial ice ridge is 12 J/m2. This value is in a same level of those first-year sea ice’s fracture energy measured in the field