# ESCO 2020 TALK: THE ROLE OF GRANULAR MECHANICS AND POROUS FLOW FOR ICE SHEET BEHAVIOR

[1]ESCO 2020, the 7th European Seminar on Computing, was held between June 8
and 12.  I presented my current research on ice-sheet and sediment mechanics.

Full abstract:

   Title: The role of granular mechanics and porous flow for ice
   sheet behavior in a changing climate

   Ice sheets and glaciers commonly flow over sedimentary deposits, in
   particular in areas of fast ice flow. The basal sediments are weakened by
   high water pressure provided by ice melt and limited drainage. Areas of
   fast flow are primary contributors to sea-level rise, so an accurate
   understanding of the thermomechanical multiphysics problem of ice, water,
   and sediment is crucial for predicting dynamical behavior under future
   climate scenarios. The in-situ observational basis from borehole
   measurements shows that the subglacial environment is highly dynamic. Water
   pressures, strain rate, and glacial sliding patterns are extremely variable
   in time and space, and hint towards significant complexity beyond current
   modelling approaches. Sediment transport by ice flow reshapes the bed, and
   can feed back to the ice flow physics. In this presentation I explain our
   efforts to numerically describe the subglacial sediment mechanics and fluid
   dynamics, and how the processes affect ice sheet behavior. GPU-based
   particle-scale simulations using the discrete element method and porous
   fluid dynamics provide detailed insight into sediment and meltwater
   dynamics. However, the intense computational requirements severely limit
   their applicability to coupled simulations of ice and bed. Our newest
   efforts use continuum models of non-local granular fluidity to simulate
   essential behavior on larger spatial and temporal scales. We show that the
   variability observed in field borehole measurements can be explained by
   considering the coupled dynamics of the ice-water-sediment system. From
   these dynamics ice flow has the ability to rapidly reshape its bed,
   providing additional feedbacks to ice contribution to sea level in a
   changing climate.

Slides and video below:

 - slides: https://adamsgaard.dk/npub/esco2020-damsgaard.pdf
 - video: https://adamsgaard.dk/video/damsgaard_esco2020.mp4


References:

[1] https://www.esco2020.femhub.com/

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