Determination of fracturing mechanisms in ice using pulsed power

Abstract

The focus of this research is to study mechanisms that constitute ice fracturing via pulsed electric power. Ice serves as an especially attractive test medium due to its accessibility, it use as a model solid, and its applicability in real-world problems such as ice-breaking ships or the extraction of water from possible ice sheets on non-Earth environments. The experiments described herein utilize exploding wires and surrogate exploding wires in direct contact with conventional ice cubes in order to determine the influence of fusing wave-shape and method of contact on the fracturing of ice. The surrogate exploding wire used consist of a layer of polypropylene with ∼100 Å aluminum coating, and are referred to as metallized polypropylene film (MPPF). While the MPPF acts like a fuse just as a thin wire does, its properties can be manipulated to produce a controlled characteristic current wave shape for the desired application. This allows for the determination of what waveform profile, if any, results in the fracturing of ice. Then, the placement of the wire or MPPF with respect to the ice was varied to determine the best orientation to successfully fracture ice.