Atmosphere Ocean Science Colloquium

A continuum viscous-elastic-brittle, FEM/DG model for the fracture and drift of sea ice

Speaker: Veronique Dansereau

Location: Online

Date: Wednesday, April 14, 2021, 3:30 p.m.

Synopsis:

The thin ice covering the polar oceans is a complex geomaterial that is constantly breaking and moving under the action of the winds and ocean currents. Doing so, it also experiences rheological transitions between a brittle solid and a granular fluid regime. A simple continuum mechanical framework was recently developed in the view of representing the dynamics of sea ice in regional and global stand-alone sea ice or coupled climate models. It combines the concepts of elastic memory, progressive damage and viscous-like relaxation of stresses. In this talk, I will present this framework and its ongoing numerical development based on Finite Element, Discontinuous Galerkin methods.