Numerical and experimental investigation of the resistance performance of an icebreaking cargo vessel in pack ice conditions

The resistance performance of an icebreaking cargo vessel in pack ice conditions was investigated numerically and experimentally using a recently developed finite element (FE) model and model tests. A comparison between numerical analysis and experimental results with synthetic ice in a standard towing tank was carried out. The comparison extended to results with refrigerated ice to examine the feasibility of using synthetic ice. Two experiments using two different ice materials gave a reasonable agreement. Ship-ice interaction loads are numerically calculated based on the fluid structure interaction (FSI) method using the commercial FE package LS-DYNA. Test results from model testing with synthetic ice at the Pusan National University towing tank, and with refrigerated ice at the National Research Council's (NRC) ice tank, are used to validate and benchmark the numerical simulations. The designed ice-going cargo vessel is used as a target ship for three concentrations (90%, 80%, and 60%) of pack ice conditions. Ice was modeled as a rigid body but the ice density was the same as that in the experiments. The numerical challenge is to evaluate hydrodynamic loads on the ship's hull; this is difficult because LS-DYNA is an explicit FE solver and the FSI value is calculated using a penalty method. Comparisons between numerical and experimental results are shown, and our main conclusions are given.