Funds are provided to support collaboration among mathematicians, engineers and geophysicists to develop a multi-scale, computational procedure to predict ice motion, deformation and thickness under observed external forcing conditions and to verify the procedure using newly available data. Specifically, a model for predicting lead (i.e., crack) initiation, orientation and extent of opening, developed with prior NSF support, will now be extended to include additional aspects of the ice pack. These extensions exploit an explicit representation of leads and allow a complete description of lead opening, ridging and freezing that is more realistic than the spatially averaged models currently in use. Thus, this project will advance the state-of-the-art in ice mechanics through model formulation, algorithm design, efficient numerical implementation and model validation.
