A thermomechanical model for frost heave and subglacial frozen fringe

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive thermomechanical model for frozen fringes in subglacial sediments, predicting frost heave, ice lens formation, and fringe thickness by integrating fluid physics, thermodynamics, and force balance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel combined mechanical and enthalpy-based model to simulate frozen fringe development and ice lens formation in subglacial environments.

Findings

Predicts frost heave rates and ice lens spacing.

Accounts for premelting, partial ice saturation, and water flow.

Models frozen fringe thickness evolution over time.

Abstract

Ice-infiltrated sediment, known as a frozen fringe, leads to phenomena such as frost heave, ice lenses, and meters of debris-rich ice under glaciers. Understanding the dynamics of frozen fringe development is important as frost heave is responsible for damaging infrastructure at high latitudes and frozen sediments at the base of glaciers can modulate glacier flow, influencing the rate of global sea level rise. Here we study the fluid physics of interstitial freezing water in sediments and focus on the conditions relevant for subglacial environments. We describe the thermomechanics of liquid water flow through and freezing in ice-saturated frozen sediments. The force balance that governs the frozen fringe thickness depends on the weight of the overlying material, the thermomolecular force between ice and sediments across premelted films of liquid, and the water pressure within liquid films that is required by flow according to Darcy's law. We combine this mechanical model with an enthalpy method which conserves energy across phase change interfaces on a fixed computational grid. The force balance and enthalpy model together determine the evolution of the frozen fringe thickness and our simulations predict frost heave rates and ice lens spacing. Our model accounts for premelting at ice-sediment contacts, partial ice saturation of the pore space, water flow through the fringe, the thermodynamics of the ice-water-sediment interface, and vertical force balance. We explicitly account for the formation of ice lenses, regions of pure ice that cleave the fringe at the depth where the interparticle force vanishes. Our model results allow us to predict the thickness of a frozen fringe and the spacing of ice lenses at the base of glaciers.