Structural Integrity Assessment for a Polar Class Arctic Tanker under Ice Loads

The recent surge of interest in potential oil and gas reserves in the Arctic has resulted in vital technological developments in the field of Arctic shipping. New, larger vessels of novel designs are entering the region where the industry has limited experience. The design of these large vessels presents new challenges for designers and operators. ABS, DSME, and BMT Fleet have collaborated in a joint project focusing on the development of a 107,000 DWT Arctic crude oil tanker designed to comply with the IACS Polar Class PC4. Structural strength assessments of the bow and three midbody configurations subject to ice loads derived from the PC rules and several other ship-ice interaction scenarios were conducted. This paper presents the procedure and results of static nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA) and plastic grillage analysis used to simulate several identified high-risk ship-ice interaction scenarios.