Peridynamic approach to sea ice deformation and fracture: A focus on time-dependent behaviour using the Maxwell model

Sea ice fracture is a time-dependent process in which viscous relaxation delays the onset of cracking in the short term, but accumulated deformation and energy dissipation over long loading times can still lead to fracture propagation. This is evidenced by both laboratory and field experiments, with known phenomena such as creep and stress relaxation. This time-dependent material behaviour becomes particularly pronounced at larger temporal scales. In this study, we present a peridynamic (PD) approach, a particle integral scheme, to simulate the time-dependent deformation and fracture of sea ice. PD's inherent capability to handle crack initiation and multi-crack propagation offers a powerful alternative to mesh-based methods. We augment the linear-elastic constitutive relationship in the PD framework with a viscous relaxation term derived from Maxwell's theory. Our developed model is applied to idealized simulations of tensile creep-recovery deformation and time-dependent splitting fracture of sea ice, providing insights into crack propagation dynamics. This work contributes to advancing the understanding of the capability of PD methods to predict the mechanical behaviour of sea ice and offers an alternative methodology with the potential to address time-dependent fractures inherent towards larger-scale ice fracture scenarios.