On Sat, 11 Aug 2007, Eric Swanson wrote: > Having been educated as a mechanical engineer, I learned a bit about > structures and stresses. I've also done a small bit of work with > fatigue failure. That said, I think it's obvious that ice does > exhibit tensile strength, all thought how that applies to sea-ice, I > can't yet say.
Ice certainly has a tensile strength. Where it gets confusing (in terms of large scales, model or reality) is that you shouldn't think of it as one floe; its always an assembly of floes. Thats where both the "viscous" bit comes from, and the zero tensile strength (actually I think you'd find that a homogenous solid piece of ice 1m think has almost no tensile strength (measured by the wind whether it had leads or not; the same ice, on scales of 1m, would be strong). -W. William M Connolley | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/wmc/ Climate Modeller, British Antarctic Survey | 07985 935400 -- This message (and any attachments) is for the recipient only. NERC is subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the contents of this email and any reply you make may be disclosed by NERC unless it is exempt from release under the Act. Any material supplied to NERC may be stored in an electronic records management system. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
