Two-dimensional Numerical Study on the Growth of Sea Ice Crystals with Flotation of Crystal Nuclei and Its C-axes Distribution

Microstructures and c-axes distribution of sea ice greatly influence their mechanical and other properties and detailed studies are needed. So far, we have attempted to reproduce the growth process by a novel technique of Voronoi dynamics and succeeded to predict anisotropic distributions of c-axes; however the orientation distributions at the top most surface of ice showed some discrepancy compared to the one in real specimen. One reason for this discrepancy was supposed to be the fact that crystal nuclei were fixed throughout the simulation, while in reality, crystal nuclei will move to the sea surface by the buoyancy effect. In this study, we employ a particle method and take the effect of flotation into account. Obtained results show some typical aspects which were not seen in our previous simulations but found in real crystals.