Measurement of the Fracture Toughness of Glacier Ice

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Abstract
Fracture-toughness testing of both fresh-water and sea ice has used specimen geometries designed for metals. These designs are too large and difficult to manufacture for testing material cored from a glacier. This paper presents an alternative specimen, a radially cracked ring fractured by internal pressure. Tests using this specimen on the Bersærkerbræ, a valley glacier in the Stauning Alper, north-east Greenland, gave a mean fracture toughness of 58. This is half the value typically obtained by other workers in laboratory tests. The results are compared with other data and the reasons for the disagreement discussed.