Experimental investigation of on-deck icing for marine vessels

• Main Author: Saha, Debashish
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Memorial University of Newfoundland 2017
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: https://research.library.mun.ca/12612/; https://research.library.mun.ca/12612/1/thesis.pdf

Marine icing is a complex phenomenon and understanding its growth process is important to construct ice growth models that can be built with remote sensing unit as a mean of generating a more accurate ice chart that can help in the prediction and prevention of the ice accretion on the deck of the vessel/ rig. In an arctic environment, wave impact and splash can significantly affect ice accretion on a marine structure. To predict ice accretion, water sheet breakup behavior onto a surface needs to be studied closely. The freezing behavior of salt water mostly encountered in marine vessels and offshore structures is very complicated compared to fresh water due to the salt content. A comparative effort to analyze the difference and similarity between the differing ice accretion behaviors of salt and fresh water as well as to further examine water sheet splash are the motivation of experimental investigation performed in two separate lab scale test models. The setup preparation, measurement technique, and results are presented. The results show that in fresh water freezing, droplet cooling behavior, splash area and solidification time were mainly affected by the volume of the falling droplets. The presence of salt affects the cooling time as the falling droplet size is increased. The results from the water sheet breakup tests show that jet velocity significantly affects splash size upon breakup. It is also shown that high attack angles are beneficial in low-velocity impacts.