Discontinuous Galerkin method for ice strength investigation

This paper discusses numerical modeling of various ice strength measurement experiments including uniaxial compression and bending as well as comparison of data obtained from numerical experiments with field ones. Numerical simulation is based on dynamic continuum mechanics system of equations with ice considered as elasto-plastic medium with brittle and crushing fracture dynamic criteria. Simulation software developed by the authors is based on discontinuous Galerkin method and runs on high-performance systems with distributed memory. Estimation of explicit values used by mathematical models poses a major problem because it is impossible to measure some of them in field experiments directly due to multiple physical processes interference. It is only possible to measure directly their total influence in practice. However, this problem may be solved by comparison of numerical experiment with field experiment data. As a result of this work, elasto-plastic ice model adequacy is discussed and some missing physical properties are obtained from numerical experiments.