| Summary: | Recent increase of ship traffic at the Arctic regions have increased the demand to develop more efficient ways to estimate ship-ice interaction. Currently the most reliable method to study the ship-ice interaction is by conducting ice towing tank tests. However, these tests are rather expensive and are usually conducted at the end of the design process. The growth of computational power has made it possible to use numerical methods to model this interaction in addition to the traditional model tests and empirical methods. The use of numerical methods would allow more accurate investigation of ship-ice interaction already at the early design phase. This thesis aims to investigate the feasibility of a coupled computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and discrete element method (DEM) approach to simulate ship-ice interaction in a brash ice channel. The main interest in the study is on the simulation of the ice block trajectories and in qualitative results. In addition, the ice resistance approximation of the numerical model is evaluated. The computations are divided into three steps: verification of the open channel flow, calibration of the coupled numerical method in a brash ice channel and finally the calibrated model is compared against experimental results. All the simulations are conducted by using a commercial software Star-CCM+. The results showed that the coupled CFD-DEM method is a promising tool to investigate ship-ice interaction. The results are in-line with other similar studies. The ice resistance results of the numerical model were promising, but there is still large differences between the simulated and experimental ice block trajectory results. Because the ship-ice interaction is a complex phenomenon that involves many parameters and factors, the model has noticeable uncertainties. Therefore, the numerical method needs more development and validation to improve the reliability of the results. Laivaliikenteen lisääntyminen arktisilla alueilla on lisännyt tarvetta tehokkaammille menetelmille mallintaa ...
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