The brittle compressive failure of fresh-water columnar ice loaded biaxially Original Research Article

New experiments have been performed on the brittle compressive failure of columnar-grained, S2 fresh-water ice, proportionally loaded biaxially across the columns at −10 °C at 4.5 × 10−3 s−1. The results and analysis show that under higher confinement (σ22/σ11 > 0.2) where terminal failure occurs via across-column cleavage and spalling out of the loading plane, a combination of wing crack growth and Euler buckling of deformation-induced thin plates underlies the process.