Abaqus user-defined elements subroutine for cohesive zone model of hydrofracturing of surface crevasses in ice shelves

We present a finite-element-based cohesive zone model for simulating the nonlinear fracture process driving the propagation of water-filled surface crevasses in floating ice tongues. The fracture process is captured using an interface element whose constitutive behavior is described by a bilinear cohesive law, and the bulk rheology of ice is described by a nonlinear elasto-viscoplastic model. The additional loading due to meltwater pressure within the crevasse is incorporated by combining the ideas of poromechanics and damage mechanics. We performed several numerical studies to explore the parametric sensitivity of surface crevasse depth to ice rheology, cohesive strength, density, and temperature, for different levels of meltwater depth. We find that viscous (creep) strain accumulation promotes crevasse propagation and that surface crevasses propagate deeper in ice shelves/tongues if we consider depth-varying ice density and temperature profiles. Therefore, ice flow models must account for depth-varying density and temperature-dependent viscosity to appropriately describe calving outcomes.

This dataset contains the ABAQUS input files for simulating floating ice shelves with constant density assuming linear elastic rheology or elasto-visco-plastic rheology and ABAQUS user-defined elements subroutine for water-filled cohesive zone elements. Jupyter notebooks for generating the figures in the paper are also included in this dataset.