Field Program for Simulation of Station-keeping Conditions for Arctic Drilling and Production Vessels

A field program was carried out on the Norwegian Coast Guard icebreaker KV Svalbard in February 2008, in the Barents Sea. The Ice Load Monitoring project currently undertaken by DNV and joint industry partners was extended to include progress through ice at very low velocities as a simulation of station keeping conditions for a new generation of Arctic drillrigs and production vessels. Existing scaling relationships were used to relate the resistance of the Svalbard to the expected resistance of a moored vessel of defined characteristics, and for different conditions. The paper summarizes the results of the field measurements, and provides an insight into how the scaling relationships were developed, and their limitations.