Natural Breaker Drillship/FPSO Concept for Ice Offshore

A new type of drillship and floating production platform concept has been has been a developed by the author. This is based on lessons learned from azimuth thruster icebreakers and lessons of station keeping with dynamically positioned and moored vessels in real life operations. The new concept, called Natural Breaker, is based on the concept that the ice does not need to be broken by the hull of the drillship/platform but can be broken using the wake of azimuth thrusters. Some of the key lessons from use of the azimuth thrusters support the fact that the wake of the thrusters can be more efficient breaking the ice than the hull of the vessel. Furthermore the azimuth thruster wake clears ice efficiently including dismantling keels of first year ice ridges. The resulting concept contains a combination of several thrusters and can be further enhanced by using a turret mooring system. The capability of self ice management thus introduced, can result in a reduction in the need of external ice management system in support of such drillship/platform.