Author(s): Stephen F. Ackley; Hayley H. Shen; Mingrui Dai; Yong Yuan
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Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: The Antarctic sea ice consists largely of granular crystals derived initially from frazil ice. Observations made on research cruises in and out of the pack ice zones suggest that the ice covers were products of the frazil-pancake ice cycle (Lange et al., 1989). The formation of pancake ice has been associated with the ubiquitous waves in the Southern Ocean. However, due to its rapid formation process, pancake ice is difficult to study from field experiments. This paper describes two sets of laboratory experiments conducted at the USA Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (USA CRREL), one set in a large outdoor test pond and the other in a cold room flume. We previously hypothesized that either bending or tension failure could control the floe diameter of pancake ice. The experimental data provide a good fit to a prediction of floe diameter based on the tension failure model.
Year: 2002