Brittle Fracture of Ice at 77 K

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Abstract
Laboratory-grown single crystals, both pure and HF-doped, and pure polycrystals of ice, as well as natural, columnar-grained ice from the River St Lawrence, have been deformed in uniaxial compression at 77 K at strain-rates between 10-5 and 10-3 s-1. Brittle fracture was observed, with stress-strain curves similar to those found for rocks at room temperature. The first cracks appeared at low stresses, ≈0.3 MN m-2, in agreement with theory, but the failure or fracture stress was high ≈50 MN m-2. The ratio of experimental to theoretical strength was o.28. HF doping of the single crystals had no effect at this temperature.

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