• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.59-69
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• 2019

This paper focuses on the numerical simulation of ice abrasion induced by unbreakable ice floe. Under the assumption that unbreakable floes behave as rigid body, the Discrete Element Method (DEM) was applied to simulate the interaction between a fixed structure and ice floes. DEM is a numerical technique which is eligible for computing the motion and effect of a large number of particles. In DEM simulation, individual ice floe was treated as single rigid element which interacts with each other following the given interaction rules. Interactions between the ice floes and structure were defined by soft contact and viscous Coulomb friction laws. To derive the details of the interactions in terms of interaction parameters, the Finite Element Method (FEM) was employed. An abrasion process between a structure and an ice floe was simulated by FEM, and the parameters in DEM such as contact stiffness, contact damping coefficient, etc. were calibrated based on the FEM result. Resultantly, contact length and contact path length, which are the most important factors in ice abrasion prediction, were calculated from both DEM and FEM and compared with each other. The results showed good correspondence between the two results, providing superior numerical efficiency of DEM.