The relationship between glacier creep and glacier stress can be given by Glen’s Flow Law:

where ε‎ is the strain rate, A and n are constants, and τ‎ is the basal shear stress. The constant n = 3, and the value of A are dependent on ice temperature, crystal orientation, debris content, and other factors (Davis at Antarctic glaciers.org website). In using this law to model real ice masses, remember that many simplifications may have been assumed (B. Hubbard and N. Glasser 2005).