Phase-field fracture modeling of crevasse propagation, lake drainage events, and cliff collapse in glaciers
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Modeling the fracture mechanics of surface crevasses in glaciers is key to determining whether they remain passive or propagate to open a rift and/or trigger iceberg calving. Additionally, meltwater from supraglacial lakes can pressurize crevasses and drive hydraulic fractures causing rapid lake drainage events that can alter glacier dynamics. Furthermore, granular/frictional material behavior of ice can lead to distributed crack damage and collapse of ice cliffs in marine terminating glaciers. Thus, fracture propagation in glaciers happens to be a complex thermo-hydro-mechanical process and simulating their growth and interaction in 3D, while resolving meter-scale fractures to kilometer-scale domains length scales, remains challenging. In this talk, I will discuss a few advances in phase field modeling of fracture that addresses specific challenges: adaptive mesh refinement strategies to reduce the high computational cost, stress/strength-based formulations to account for tension-compression asymmetry and cohesive strength, and a two-scale formulation for hydraulic fracture. First, I will discuss a novel adaptive mesh refinement algorithm [1] to solve the stress-based phase-field fracture model equations in 3D. I will present results from idealized simulations of kilometer-scale glacier domains showing 15- to 30-fold speedups compared to locally refined meshes, with less than 2 discrepancies in crevasse depth. Second, I will describe a Mohr-Coulomb-based phase field fracture model [2] for visco-elastic ice that can be used to determine the critical conditions triggering ice cliff collapse. I will present results showing that fast-moving glaciers are prone to tensile failure causing crevasse propagation away from the ice front, whereas slow-moving glaciers with significant basal friction exhibit shear failure causing cliff collapse near the ice front. Third, I will discuss the implementation of a two-scale formulation for turbulent hydraulic fracture of glaciers [3] in the phase-field framework, and present results showing vertical and horizontal crack growth leading to subglacial blister formation and glacial uplift. [1] Nguyen, D. T., Gupta, A., Duddu, R., & Annavarapu, C. (2025). Finite Elements in Analysis and Design, 244, 104311. [2] Clayton, T., Duddu, R., Hageman, T., & Martínez-Pañeda, E. (2025). Journal of Glaciology, 71, e70. [3] Hageman, T., Mejía, J., Duddu, R., & Martínez-Pañeda, E. (2024). The Cryosphere, 18(9), 3991-4009.
