Session: 07-04-01 Vessels in Ice - Simulations

Paper Number: 80106

80106 - Simulation of a Ship Advancing in Pre-Sawn Ice 

Ship-ice interactions are generally complex procedures. For instance, ship advancement in level ice is a combination of breaking the ice sheet and then pushing away the broken ice pieces. Thus the resistance involves components due to breaking the ice, clearing the ice and water, which are required to be assessed separately for full understanding. Experimental tests of a ship advancing in level ice can only measure the total force, unable to analyse the roles of each component, which makes it hard to understand the underlying physics and derive applicable empirical equations. Therefore, a standard experimental procedure is to saw the level ice manually and let the ship advance through, which exempts the ship resistance due to breaking the ice, so that the ship only undertakes the resistance due to clearing the ice and water. Even so, experiments are limited by the costs of vast runs for making and sawing ice, also lacking measurement techniques to obtain holistic information.

In this context, the present work develops a novel CFD+DEM (Computational Fluid Dynamics + Discrete Element Method) model to simulate the ship interaction with pre-sawn ice, with advanced and new simulation details for the CFD-DEM model being introduced. Meanwhile, parallel experimental tests are carried out in the Aalto Ice Tank to validate the new model. Based on the CFD-DEM technique, key information of the interaction is obtained, including the coverage percentage of ship surface by ice, as well as the trace of ice with the influence of ship wake. Furthermore, relationships are presented for the pre-sawn ice resistance and water resistance versus ship speed. The result analyses and discussion are expected to provide valuable insights into ship interactions with level ice and broken ice floes.

Presenting Author: Luofeng Huang University College London

Authors:

Luofeng Huang Cranfield University
Fang Li Aalto University
Minghao Li Chalmers University of Technology