Date of Award
2025
Document Type
Thesis (Master's)
Department or Program
Engineering Sciences
First Advisor
Colin Meyer, Kasia Warburton
Second Advisor
Laura Ray
Third Advisor
Don Perovich
Abstract
On the surface of the Greenland ice sheet or around the margins of the Antarctic ice shelf, water infiltrates porous ice. It is important to understand this infiltration process since water populating the pore space of ice directly impacts the density, porosity, and wetness of ice. These properties influence the mechanics and tensile strength of ice, as greater amounts of infiltration result in faster or more widespread deformation events, which may lead to adverse climatic effects such as sea level rise and ocean current disruption. While studies have considered the thermodynamics and fluid mechanics of water vertically percolating through snow under gravity, here we consider the horizontal spreading of water with freezing under gravity. In this study, we devise a one-dimensional depth-integrated model for water horizontally infiltrating porous ice via gravity current as a Darcy flow from a source of constant depth. We first analyze the infiltration process in the absence of phase change and find that the source-driven infiltration behaves self-similarly. We then capture the infiltration process subject to freezing with an analytical relationship between the source porosity and the time over which the pores at the source are frozen shut. Once the source is frozen shut, residual infiltration in the snowpack as a wetting front becomes weaker and a freezing front develops from the source. Under these freezing dynamics, we bound the region of liquid water by using the similarity solution to locate the wetting front and approximate the freezing front evolution. We then discuss methods to validate and apply the model through experiments and field observations. We construct a regime diagram to predict breakthrough potential given snowpack dimensions, ice temperature scale, and initial source porosity. We also discuss methods to extend the model theoretically to icy satellites and warm water sources.
Recommended Citation
Cheng, Anthony, "Horizontal Infiltration of Water through Porous Snow as a Gravity Current" (2025). Dartmouth College Master’s Theses. 251.
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/masters_theses/251
Included in
Applied Mechanics Commons, Glaciology Commons, Hydrology Commons, Non-linear Dynamics Commons, Ordinary Differential Equations and Applied Dynamics Commons, Partial Differential Equations Commons
