Maps for brittle and brittle-like failure in ice

The strain rate and stress required for faulting in ice under low to moderate confinement are well understood and can be quantified in terms of independently measured materials parameters. Under high confinement, defined as confinement sufficient to suppress frictional sliding, brittle-like failure is still observed, even at pressure well below that required for faulting associated with phase transformations. While previous work has qualitatively suggested that high-confinement faults not associated with phase transformations, here termed P-faults, are likely associated with adiabatic instabilities, the failure map for P-faulting remains incomplete because of the lack of a quantitative understanding of the P-faulting terminal failure stress. Here we develop a new quantitative model for the P-faulting terminal failure stress that is consistent with recent experimental observations and then use this model to complete the failure map for compressive brittle and brittle-like failure of freshwater ice. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.