The break-up of sea ice is caused by ocean-ice coupled waves. The mechanism by which this occurs and how it would be affected by climate changes are not well understood. Current models of wave propagation idealize the sea ice as a semi-infinite homogeneous plate. They explain many features of the wave propagation, but cannot give detailed quantitative predictions of the strain fields generated in real ice covers from a given incoming wave field.

This project was concerned with determining the heterogeneous nature of the ice to better design and interpret experiments studying the nature of ice break-up.