Numerical Simulation of Ship-Ice Interaction

Abstract

The increasing activities in arctic sea areas over the last years have led to a rising demand for numerical tools to design and evaluate ice-going ships. Numerical simulation of ship-ice interaction can be a suitable method for engineers to evaluate ship designs in early development phases. We present an efficient method to evaluate local and global loads on ships in level ice at moderate computational effort. The objective of this contribution is the holistic simulation of the icebreaking process along with the hydrodynamic interplay of the broken ice cups with the surrounding level ice and the hull. For this purpose, a free surface flow solver based upon the Lattice Boltzmann method is coupled to an icebreaking model and a contact-dynamic physics engine. Overall, the approach seeks to compute both local loads, acting on the ship hull, as well as the total resistance in ice. The direct simulation approach makes it possible to consider the load contributions of icebreaking and displacement separately and to analyze their contribution to the total resistance more precisely. Simulation results for a tanker in various ice conditions show significant differences in load distribution and can provide valuable information for the designer of ice-going ships.