Today's best engineering practice for the design of a stationary floating structure in ice infested water is articulated around physical testing in an ice basin and numerical modelling of the structure response to the relevant ice interactions.
Ice basin testing is the best way to simulate the complex scenario of a moored floating structure interacting with drifting intact level ice and ridges. It is also per today the main source of experience for the design of such structures as full scale experience is sparse. However, ice basin testing suffers from deviations due to scaling effects or mismatch between one or several of the achieved and targeted properties (of the modelled ice and structure).
As a consequence, the outcome of ice basin tests needs to be assessed and correction of measurements are required. An efficient way is to use an engineering numerical model to simulate the achieved ice-structure interaction in the ice basin, qualify the numerical model by comparing simulation results and measurements, and then simulate the targeted interactions with the numerical model. Such a numerical model may further be used to simulate the full range target design conditions for the ice structure interaction.
The RITAS ice basin campaign tested a structure element designed to gain insight in the level ice bending and accumulation process around a traditional moored floating arctic structure design. These measurements are well suited to assess the validity of a numerical model designed to replicate this type of interaction.
The SimShipIce numerical model is an engineering tool which focuses on replicating the steering processes during the interaction between a moored structure and drifting intact level ice and ridges. Such a model needs to be calibrated against ice basin test outcome.
