Abstract With climate changes and global warming, the extent of Marginal Ice Zone (MIZ) in the polar region is widening, and there is now more research attention on the wave interactions with broken ice covers within the zone to gain insights into its future sea conditions. Towards this objective, the dispersion and attenuation of surface waves propagating through segmented floating viscoelastic covers was investigated experimentally in this study. The covers were made of oil-doped Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) material, with different curing agent percentages to vary their rheological properties. For stiffer covers, the measurements showed that the effect of segmentation on wavelength modification was significant, and the dispersion relation agreed generally with the existing theoretical predictions for discrete floating elastic segments despite the presence of the additional viscosity for the material. At the same time, the earlier empirical formula based on the concept of “equivalent rigidity” to represent the segmented elastic cover, did not work well for the conditions investigated. With more flexible covers, however, the effect of segmentation became insignificant for thin cover thickness. Given the present experimental conditions, we confirmed that the effect of scattering was negligible, and the wave attenuation should be attributed to the various dissipative mechanisms. An empirical relation for the attenuation was established based on the experimental results, to quantitatively relate the attenuation coefficient to the incident wave characteristics and cover properties. The relation identifies a significant inverse relationship with the viscosity of cover material, and thus confirms the essential role of viscoelastic representation for the attenuation predictions.

中文翻译：

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通过分段浮动粘弹性覆盖层的重力波实验研究

摘要 随着气候变化和全球变暖，极地边缘冰带（MIZ）的范围不断扩大，现在越来越多的研究关注该带内碎冰盖的波浪相互作用，以了解其未来的海况。 . 为此，本研究对通过分段浮动粘弹性覆盖层传播的表面波的色散和衰减进行了实验研究。盖子由掺油聚二甲基硅氧烷 (PDMS) 材料制成，具有不同的固化剂百分比以改变其流变特性。对于较硬的盖子，测量结果表明分割对波长修改的影响是显着的，尽管存在材料的附加粘度，但色散关系总体上与离散浮动弹性段的现有理论预测一致。同时，早期基于“等效刚度”概念来表示分段弹性覆盖层的经验公式在所研究的条件下效果不佳。然而，对于更灵活的覆盖物，对于薄覆盖物厚度，分割的影响变得微不足道。鉴于目前的实验条件，我们证实散射的影响可以忽略不计，波衰减应归因于各种耗散机制。根据实验结果建立了衰减的经验关系，定量地将衰减系数与入射波特性和覆盖特性相关联。该关系确定了与覆盖材料粘度的显着反比关系，从而证实了粘弹性表示对于衰减预测的重要作用。