Critical Roles of Constitutive Laws and Numerical Models in the Design and Development of Arctic Offshore Installations

Perhaps, it is time for both constitutive laws and failure criteria for ice to join efforts with numerical methods and computer power to provide a powerful simulation tool for ice engineers to calculate ice loads on Arctic structures, and subsequently investigate the response of the structure with a higher degree of confidence than ever before. Considering the power of computers today and the complexity of ice behaviour, and the subsequent response of the structure, the combined constitutive-numerical technology seems to be one of the most appropriate and effective engineering tools to calculate ice loads on Arctic offshore installations, and realistically simulate ice-structures interaction processes.