Dynamic Ice Forces on Offshore Structures

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ice Sheet; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.506.2631; http://web2.clarkson.edu/projects/reushen/yue.pdf

Compliant offshore structures will easily be subjected to vibrations induced by cyclical environmental forces such as wind, wave or earthquake. For those structures in ice-infest area, vibrations would also be induced by cyclical ice forces. These cyclic forces occur during the failure process of ice sheet while interacting with the structure. This phenomenon has been observed since 1960’s in Cook Inlet of Alaska but not been fully understood and simulated due to the lack of useful test data. In recent years, the offshore jacket platforms in Bohai Bay of China were found to produce strong vibrations caused by moving ice sheet. In order to design optimum ice resist structures, comprehensive studies of dynamic ice forces were conducted. Several structures in Bohai Bay had been installed with sensors to investigate ice-induced vibrations (Yue et al.1998). These tests have revealed that resonant vibrations could be induced by moving ice. Based on field tests, the mechanism of dynamic ice-structure interaction has been studied and ice load functions have been developed (Yue et al. 2000). But in order to form practical dynamic ice model more detail studies need to be carried out. This includes field test data analysis and