Fracture propagation as means of rapidly transferring surface meltwater to the base of glaciers
Issue Date
2007-01-07Author
van der Veen, Cornelis J.
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
1] Propagation of water-filled crevasses through glaciers is investigated based on the linear elastic fracture mechanics approach. A crevasse will penetrate to the depth where the stress intensity factor at the crevasse tip equals the fracture toughness of glacier ice. A crevasse subjected to inflow of water will continue to propagate downward with the propagation speed controlled primarily by the rate of water injection. While the far-field tensile stress and fracture toughness determine where crevasses can form, once initiated, the rate of water-driven crevasse propagation is nearly independent of these two parameters. Thus, rapid transfer of surface meltwater to the bed of a cold glacier requires abundant ponding at the surface to initiate and sustain full thickness fracturing before refreezing occurs.
Description
This is the published version, also available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2006GL028385.
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Citation
van der Veen, C. J. (2007), Fracture propagation as means of rapidly transferring surface meltwater to the base of glaciers, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L01501, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2006GL028385.
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