Creep and fracture of warm columnar freshwater ice

. This work addresses the time-dependent response of 3 m×6 m floating edge-cracked rectangular plates of columnar freshwater S2 ice by conducting load control (LC) mode I fracture tests in the Aalto Ice Tank of Aalto University. The thickness of the ice plates was about 0.4 m and the temperature at the top surface about −0.3 ∘C. The loading was applied in the direction normal to the columnar grains and consisted of creep/cyclic-recovery...