Huge pressure exerted by water in subzero temperatures while trying to form ice?

Question

Scenario description:

1. I fill a cube (made of 5mm thick plastic panels) with water

2. I seal the cube with no air space inside

3. Since water expands when it becomes ice, I assume it will exert a pressure against the cube walls if I leave this sealed cube in an environment with temperatures below 0C.

Question: What will happen?

1. The water will most certainly break the cube walls

2. Ice will begin to form, and stop when the cube's pressure increases to the point that it prevents volume expansion (and thus ice formation). Cube deformation is going to be dramatic.

3. There will be little ice formation, and cube deformation is little and elastic

Assume the cube is left in -10C, -20C and -30C environment.

A rough calculation is appreciated

Thanks!

Answer 1

1. Is possible, but we don't have enough information on properties of the cube to say it will "certainly" break.

Since we lack information on the properties of the cube, making any calculations would be nearly meaningless.

another possibility is that all the water will freeze and the plastic will experience elastic deformation.

There is little chance that the plastic will be strong enough to resist a pressure that would limit the freezing of any portion of the water at a temperature significantly below 0°C  (I'd consider -10°C significantly below 0 in this case)

Answer 2

Preventing ice from forming by applying pressure on the walls of a cube would require solid steel walls.  When you use ice skates, the narrow blade melts the ice as you glide along.  If it is really cold, the ice does not melt and you don't glide.

  In the scenario you propose, unless the walls are extremely strong, the interplay between distortion and freezing would be too complicated to test.  

At the temps you give, which are far enough below zero, it is most likely that it would just freeze in a compressed form and take more energy to freeze (more time to freeze solid)

Density of water and super cooled water

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_(mole...

  Ice characteristics.