| Summary: | Maritime activities have significantly increased in Polar regions as a result of climate change. Ice covers are fading resulting in new routes which were not accessible before. Due to increased navigational aspects in such regions, the interest of maritime industries and academia has been raised with a common goal to estimate design loads for the development of ice-going vessels. Estimation of design loads has been carried out using full-scale trials and various numerical and analytical models. The Polar research vessel S.A.Agulhas II’s Antarctic expedition took place at the end of the year 2018. The vessel came across numerous ice floe fields ranging from open water to highly concentrated floe fields. Selection of one scenario based on observed variations in ice conditions and ice loads from the entire expedition was carried out. Implementation of modern image processing techniques over visual observations and image data provided geometrical parameters of ice floes. Peak ice loads were filtered from full-scale measurements. Collision-energy-model based on (Popov, 1967) was implemented to estimate ice loads by analysing impact scenarios of the ship with floating ice floes selected from generated ice floe fields (produced based on image processing results of actual floes). Probability analysis to study distribution family was carried out using line load results obtained from the (Popov, 1967) method. Distribution fitting results were analysed using the goodness of fit tests. Simulated line loads measurements were compared with full-scale measurements to predict the validity of implemented model. This research study implemented collision-energy approach for estimation of ice loads deduced from original ice conditions created using image processing methods.
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