Influence of Ice Floe Shape and Distribution on Ship Resistance

Many ice basin tests have been performed on ships to assess the ice resistance of the hull in an ice floe field. During these tests, many parameters are studied, the most important of them being the transit speed, the thickness and the concentration of ice. Given the cost and the time required to carry out these basin test campaigns, it is imperative to keep the number of tests to the strict minimum, whilst still making it possible to draw conclusions about the sizing of the vessel. Hence, the influence of ice floe shape and their distribution in the field are generally not considered. A way to achieve sensitivity studies regarding these parameters is to use numerical simulations in addition to a basin test. There are few advanced numerical design tools available in the market, especially those able to cope with any kind of structure geometry and a large variety of ice interaction & failure mechanisms. In 2012 TechnipFMC, Cervval and Bureau Veritas initiated a common development program to offer a new tool for the design of offshore structures interacting with ice combining a variety of models and approaches such as analytical, numerical and empirical. This numerical tool called Ice-MAS (www.ice-mas.com) uses a multi-agent technology and has the possibility to combine, in a common framework, multiple phenomena from various natures and heterogeneous scales (i.e. drag, friction, ice-sheet bending failure, local crushing and rubble stack up). The study presented in this paper compares the simulation results for different ice floe fields not only in terms of concentration, maximum size of floe and their distribution but also in the way to generate the ice floe and its shape.