Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Investigating Ice Strength

Abstract

This paper discusses the numerical modeling of various ice-strength measurement experiments, including uniaxial compression and bending, and it also compares the data obtained by field and numerical experiments. Numerical simulation is based on a dynamic system of continuum mechanics equations with ice considered as an elasto-plastic medium with brittle and crushing fracture dynamic criteria. The simulation software developed by the authors is based on the discontinuous Galerkin method and runs on high-performance systems with a distributed memory. Estimating the explicit values used by the mathematical models poses a major problem because some of them cannot be directly measured in field experiments due to the multiple interferences of physical processes. In practice, it is only possible to directly measure their total influence. However, this problem can be solved by comparing the numerical experiment with the field data. As a result of this work, the elasto-plastic ice model is verified and some missing physical properties are obtained by the numerical experiments.