Assessment of Ship Ice Loads in Pack Ice Available to Purchase

World trade and exploration for natural gas/oil in the Arctic/Subarctic has greatly stimulated the development of shipping in arctic regions. More and larger commercial vessels have or will operate in the harsh environments. This stretches the validity of the existing ship design rules and raises concerns. To deal with this challenge, owners, designers, operators and regulators have been trying to develop more and better design scenarios. This paper addresses such scenarios. Impacts between ships and the discrete ice floes are unavoidable. This paper develops an approach for ice load assessments for a ship interacting with discrete ice floes on the bow and midbody area. One typical scenario in those interactions in considered in this paper: a midbody impact with a second flow, following a glancing impact between the bow and a first ice floe. The assessed ice loads of the two impacts within this scenario are compared to the current requirements of the hull structural strength at the bow and mid-body. From the hull strength point of view, the safe navigation speeds were estimated due to various factors (mass, velocity, geometry). The paper highlights some of the challenges of direct design and hull strength checking.