Numerical simulation of hydroelastic waves along a semi-infinite ice floe

• Main Authors: Huang, L, Dolatshah, A, Cardiff, P, Bennetts, L, Toffoli, A, Tukovic, Z, Thomas, G
• Other Authors: Meylan, Mike, Bennetts, Luke, Skene, David, Lamichhane, Bishnu
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: CARMA 2019
• Subjects: Arctic; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10071852/8/Huang_VoR_abstract-0052.pdf; https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10071852/

With the increasing demand for Arctic Engineering purposes, Squire suggests current theories may have oversimplified the sea ice hydroelasticity, indicating the need to develop numerical models to obtain more realistic solutions. Numerical models have been reported capable of achieving a full coupling between waves and rigid floating ice. When an ice floe is relatively small to wavelength, it is valid for the floe to be considered as rigid, thus no need to solve ice deformations. However, in order to model the sea ice hydroelasticity, a Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) approach is required to obtain the structural solution of ice deformation and couple it with the solution of surrounding fluid domain, which requires further development of above models. To fill this gap, an FSI approach was developed based on the open-source code, OpenFOAM, and it has been validated in the case of wave interaction with a finite ice floe. In this work, the developed model is extended to a very long ice floe to study the semi-infinite scenario. Simulations are performed to present the wave-induced ice deformation, with the attenuation of hydroelastic waves along the ice floe investigated.