Ship Performance in Broken Ice Floes - Preliminary Numerical Simulations

• Main Authors: Wang, J., Derradji-Aouat, A.
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: National Research Council Canada 2010
• Subjects: ship in ice; numerical calculation; LS-DYNA; Icebreaker
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.4224/17210723; https://nrc-publications.canada.ca/eng/view/object/?id=6ffa0b09-e387-444c-b118-594a9f54695b

A recently developed FE (Finite Element) model for ship performance in ice is presented in this paper. Hydrodynamic loads and ship-ice interaction loads are numerically calculated based on the Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) method by using commercial FE package LS-DYNA (www.lstc.com). Actual test results from laboratory physical model scale experiments are used to validate and benchmark the numerical simulations. One of the NRC-IOT’s standard icebreaker models (a model for the Canadian icebreaker Terry Fox) is used in the numerical simulations in two different concentrations (80% and 60%) of pack ice conditions. In this paper, only broken ice conditions are numerically simulated, and therefore ice material failure was not considered. All ice properties such as density and Young’s modulus used are the same as those measured in the NRC-IOT ice tank. The numerical challenge is to evaluate hydrodynamic loads on the ship hull. This is due to the fact that LS-DYNA is an explicit FE solver and FSI value is calculated by using a penalty method. For this purpose, a 2-D wavemaker was simulated and compared with experiments. Although the hydrodynamic loads directly acting on the ship are small compared to the ice loads, the interaction between water and ice could be important for simulating pack ice conditions or ice floe management. Comparisons between numerical and experimental results are shown and main conclusions are pointed out.