Related papers: Snow metamorphism: a fractal approach
Snowflake growth provides us with a fascinating example of spontaneous pattern formation in nature. Attempts to understand this phenomenon have led to important insights in non-equilibrium dynamics observed in various active scientific…
Bone adapts in response to its mechanical environment. This evolution of bone density is one of the most important mechanisms for developing fracture resistance. A finite element framework for simulating bone adaptation, commonly called…
Ice sintering is a form of metamorphism that drives the microstructural evolution of an aggregate of grains through surface and volume diffusion. This leads to an increase in the grain-to-grain contact area ("neck") and density of the…
Grains of ice are formed spontaneously when water vapor is injected into a weakly-ionized laboratory plasma in which the background gas has been cooled to cryogenic temperatures comparable to those of deep space. These ice grains are…
In regions where ice sheets are increasing in mass, there is a 50-200 m layer of old snow called firn which does not melt in the summer months. The density of firn tracks the transformation of snow into glacial ice at approximately 917 kg…
General conditions for the occurrence of mesoscopic phase fluctuations in condensed matter are considered. The description of different thermodynamic phases, which coexist as a mixture of mesoscopically separated regions, is based on the…
Microgels are soft colloidal particles that, when dispersed in a solvent, swell and deswell in response to changes in environmental conditions, such as temperature, concentration, and $p$H. Using Monte Carlo simulation, we model bulk…
Frost growth on cold surfaces is a transient process with coupled heat and mass transfer. Due to multiple factors such as humidity, temperature, flow velocity and constantly changing thermal properties as frost grows, precise prediction can…
The effect of turbulence on snow precipitation is not incorporated into present weather forecasting models. Here we show evidence that turbulence is in fact a key influence on both fall speed and spatial distribution of settling snow. We…
A simple multifractal coarsening model is suggested that can explain the observed dynamical behavior of the fractal dimension in a wide range of coarsening fractal systems. It is assumed that the minority phase (an ensemble of droplets) at…
Snow crystals growing from water vapor occasionally exhibit morphologies with three-fold (trigonal) symmetry, even though the ice crystal lattice has a molecular structure with six-fold symmetry. In extreme cases, thin platelike snow…
We consider stochastic rules of mass transport which lead to steady states that factorize over the links of a one-dimensional ring. Based on the knowledge of the steady states, we derive the onset of a phase transition from a liquid to a…
We investigate about the possibility of knowing the thermal history of each snow crystal through the analysis of its individual habitus. Supposition, based on experimental observations, that prevailing growth mechanisms of basal and…
Ice-templating is a well-established processing route for porous ceramics. Because of the structure/properties relationships, it is essential to better understand and control the solidification microstructures. Ice-templating is based on…
Cohesive particles form agglomerates that are usually very porous. Their geometry, particularly their fractal dimension, depends on the agglomeration process (diffusion-limited or ballistic growth by adding single particles or…
We describe laboratory-grown snow crystals that exhibit a triangular, plate-like morphology, and we show that the occurrence of these crystals is much more frequent than one would expect from random growth perturbations of the more-typical…
Fracture processes in heterogeneous materials comprise a large number of disordered spatial degrees of freedom, representing the dynamical state of a sample over the entire domain of interest. This complexity is usually modeled directly,…
Aggregation of ice crystals is a key process governing precipitation. Individual ice crystals exhibit considerable diversity of shape, and a wide range of physical processes could influence their aggregation; despite this we show that a…
Cohesive powders form agglomerates that can be very porous. Hence they are also very fragile. Consider a process of complete fragmentation on a characteristic length scale $\ell$, where the fragments are subsequently allowed to settle under…
Penitentes and suncups are structures formed as snow melts, typically high in the mountains. When the snow is dirty, dirt cones and other structures can form instead. Building on previous field observations and experiments, this work…