Micro-Compression of Snow

Titre : Micro-Compression of Snow

Laboratoire de rattachement : WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF

Encadrant : Hennig Löwe

Téléphone : +41-81-417 01 54

Co-Encadrant : Maurine Montagnat

Mots clés : snow, mechanical behavior, X-ray micro-tomograph

Contexte et objectifs de la mission de stage :

The mechanical behavior of high-porosity snow under slow compression is governed by visco-plastic deformations of the ice matrix, fast sintering of newly emerging inter-grain contacts and subsequent coarsening. The competition of these time-dependent processes determines the evolution of the microstructure during compression and eventually the constitutive behavior of snow.

To elucidate the connection between microstructural evolution and mechanical behavior, high-porosity snow will be investigated within deformation-controlled, confined compression experiments under varying strain-rates. Experiments will be conducted with a micro-compression device which is operated in an X-ray micro-tomograph. The thesis comprises experiments and the structural analysis of the time-lapse data in relation with the measured stress curves.

Place of work will be Davos, Switzerland. Preferred duration of the project is 6 months. The project will be conducted in collaboration with Maurine Montagnat, LGGE - UJF. If you are interested please contact us as soon as possible.

References :
Schleef, S., H. Löwe, M. Schneebeli, Hot-pressure sintering of low-density snow analyzed by X- ray microtomography and in situ microcompression, Acta Materialia, 71, 185-194 (2014)