A Peridynamic Approach to Simulate Sea Ice Fracture with a Focus on its time-dependent material behaviour

Abstract

Sea ice exhibits time-dependent non-linear behaviour. This is evidenced by both lab and field experiments with known phenomena such as creep and stress relaxation. This time-dependent material behaviour becomes particularly pronounced at larger temporal scales. In this study, we present a novel approach to simulate time-dependent fractures in sea ice using peridynamics (PD), a particle integral scheme. PD's inherent capability to handle crack initiation and multi-crack propagation offers a powerful alternative to mesh-based methods. We augment the linear-elastic constitutive relationship in the PD framework with a viscous relaxation term derived from Maxwell's theory. The failure is modelled using critical stretch criterion for the comparison with linear elastic results. Our developed model is applied to idealized simulations of sea ice deformation and fracture, providing insights into crack propagation dynamics. This work contributes to the advancement of understanding viscoelastic fracture in sea ice, offering an alternative methodology with the potential to address intricate crack problems inherent in larger-scale ice fracture scenarios.