Summary: | The Polar regions are increasingly in focus in recent years. Both the Antarctic and Arctic sea areas are receiving more and more ship visits. Therefore, understanding ship-ice interaction and ice loads, especially with thick ice, is a vital step to avoid possibly disastrous accidents and environmental damages to these sensitive regions. This paper is based on a particular case in Weddell Sea Expedition 2019, where the ship continuously carves thick multiyear thick ice to recover an AUV under the ice floe. The ship is instrumented with in-built strain gauges at the bow, bow shoulder and stern shoulder with a monitoring camera above the instrumented panels. In addition, ship navigation and machine control parameters, including ship speed, rudder angle and power are also recorded by the central measurement unit. This paper aims to present the measured ramming-induced ice loads with thick ice and apply statistical method to analyze all the relevant parameters to provide insights into possible factors or operations leading to high ice loads. Peer reviewed
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