Breakage of saline ice blocks in ice-to-ice contact

This paper focuses on the experiments on breakage of laboratory grown floating saline ice blocks in ice-to-ice contact. Insight on breakage is required in modeling force transmission through an ice rubble pile, since it occurs through so-called force chains, which may collapse due to buckling or the failure of individual ice blocks within the chain. In the experiments, 300 × 300 × 110 mm 3 ice blocks were set to float, brought into contact to form ice-to-ice contacts, and compressed up to failure. The force transmitted through the contacts and the failure process were recorded. It was concluded that the shear-like failure of the blocks limited the contact forces, as it occurred in about 75% of the 32 experiments performed.