Glaciology Commons^™

A Notch-Strengthening Effect In Fresh-Water Ice, Wilfrid A. Nixon, Erland M. Schulson

Dartmouth Scholarship

Tensile tests have been performed onnotched and unnotched cylindrical samples of randomlyoriented polycrystalline ice of controlled grain-size (between2.2 and 7.3mm) at a loading rate of lOOPaS-l and at a temperature of -10 0c. In the notched samples, the notch-root diameter was 80% of the base diameter. Anotch-strengthening effect was observed in the large-grained ice, with fracture stresses being up to 50% higher than that for unnotched samples of the same grain-size. This notch-strengthening effect diminished as grain-size decreased, disappearing at a grain-size of "'3 mm. The notch-strengthening effect is explained in terms of the triaxial stress constraint at the notch …