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Abstract Theory and experiments indicate that ice–bed separation during glacier slip over 2-D hard beds causes basal shear stress to reach a maximum at a particular slip velocity and decrease at higher velocities. We use the sliding theory of Lliboutry (1968) to explore how friction between debris particles in sliding ice and a rock bed affects this relationship between shear stress and slip velocity. Particle–bed contact forces and associated debris friction increase with increasing slip velocity, owing to increased rates of ice convergence with up-glacier facing surfaces. However, debris friction on diminished areas of the bed counteracts this effect as cavities grow. Thus, friction from debris alone increases only slightly with slip velocity, and for sediment particles larger than ~60 mm in diameter, debris friction peaks and decreases with increasing slip velocity. The effect on the sliding relationship is to steepen its rising limb and shift its shear stress peak to a slightly higher velocity. These results, which exclude the effect of debris friction on cavity size and debris concentrations above ~15%, indicate that the effect of debris in ice is to increase basal shear stress but not significantly change the form of the sliding relationship.
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Tidal Modulation of Ice Streams: Effect of Periodic Sliding Velocity on Ice Friction and Healing
Basal slip along glaciers and ice streams can be significantly modified by external time-dependent forcing, although it is not clear why some systems are more sensitive to tidal stresses. We have conducted a series of laboratory experiments to explore the effect of time varying load point velocity on ice-on-rock friction. Varying the load point velocity induces shear stress forcing, making this an analogous simulation of aspects of ice stream tidal modulation. Ambient pressure, double-direct shear experiments were conducted in a cryogenic servo-controlled biaxial deformation apparatus at temperatures between −2°C and −16°C. In addition to a background, median velocity (1 and 10 μm/s), a sinusoidal velocity was applied to the central sliding sample over a range of periods and amplitudes. Normal stress was held constant over each run (0.1, 0.5 or 1 MPa) and the shear stress was measured. Over the range of parameters studied, the full spectrum of slip behavior from creeping to slow-slip to stick-slip was observed, similar to the diversity of sliding styles observed in Antarctic and Greenland ice streams. Under conditions in which the amplitude of oscillation is equal to the median velocity, significant healing occurs as velocity approaches zero, causing a high-amplitude change in friction. The amplitude of the event increases with increasing period (i.e. hold time). At high normal stress, velocity oscillations force an otherwise stable system to behave unstably, with consistently-timed events during every cycle. Rate-state friction parameters determined from velocity steps show that the ice-rock interface is velocity strengthening. A companion paper describes a method of analyzing the oscillatory data directly. Forward modeling of a sinusoidally-driven slider block, using rate-and-state dependent friction formulation and experimentally derived parameters, successfully predicts the experimental output in all but a few cases.
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- PAR ID:
- 10325103
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Earth Science
- Volume:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 2296-6463
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2022.719074
