Fracture of sea ice sheets due to isostatic imbalance

The non uniform thickness of sea ice sheets creates regions of isostatic shear imbalance. For assumed ice thickness variation, the resulting bending stresses are determined sufficient to cause cracking. The ice sheet is modeled as a floating elastic plate with constant flexural rigidity. Variable thickness is obtained by representing the bottom surface as a sine wave. Upper and lower bound curves are obtained for the amplitude of the bottom surface variation versus ice breaking strength.