The interim results of the long-term ice loads monitoring on the large Arctic tanker

The three largest icebreaking tankers of Vasily Dinkov class are completing their third year of Arctic operation. They were delivered by Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard (SHI) in 2008-2009 to Russian ship-owner SOVCOMFLOT. These vessels are exporting crude oil from the Varandey offshore terminal in the south-eastern part of the Barents Sea to a trans-shipment location near Murmansk. They are under the long-term charter for NARYANMARNEFTEGAS (NMNG), a joint venture of LUKOIL and ConocoPhillips. The state-of-the-art ice load monitoring and alarm system has been installed on the third shuttle tanker Timofey Guzhenko. The project of the development, design, installation of the system, data collection and analysis is a joint venture between ABS, ConocoPhillips, and SHI with vessel owner cooperation. This system is designed to measure and record ice pressures and loads as well as compute ice-induced responses of the hull structure at highly loaded locations on the hull. Stresses resulting from the ice loads are compared with allowable stresses in near real time and the margin of safety in the structure is displayed on a bridge monitor. The system was commissioned in April 2009 with the intent of long-term unmanned operation. The data set acquired to date includes the most severe part of the 2009 winter operation and the entire 2009-2010 ice season. This paper presents the first results of the data analysis of the described data set.