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Measuring the Elastic Modulus of Snow
Author(s) -
Gerling B.,
Löwe H.,
van Herwijnen A.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2017gl075110
Subject(s) - materials science , elastic modulus , isotropy , snow , modulus , composite material , range (aeronautics) , isothermal process , optics , mineralogy , geology , physics , thermodynamics , meteorology
The elastic modulus is the most fundamental mechanical property of snow. However, literature values scatter by orders of magnitude and hitherto no cross‐validated measurements exists. To this end, we employ P wave propagation experiments under controlled laboratory conditions on decimeter‐sized snow specimen, prepared from artificial snow and subjected to isothermal sintering, to cover a considerable range of densities (170–370 kg m −3 ). The P wave modulus was estimated from wave propagation speeds in transverse isotropic media and compared to microstructure‐based finite element (FE) calculations from X‐ray tomography images. Heterogeneities and size differences between acoustic and FE sample volumes were characterized by SnowMicroPen measurements, yielding an elastic modulus as a by‐product. The moduli (10–340 MPa) from the acoustic and FE method are in very good agreement ( R 2 =0.99) over the entire range of densities. A remaining bias (24 %) between both methods can be explained by layer heterogeneities which systematically reduce the estimates from the acoustic method.