Analysis Method of Ice Load and Ship Structural Response due to Collision of Ice Bergy Bit and Level Ice

The most important factor in the structural design of ships and offshore structures operating in arctic region is ice load, which results from ice-structure interaction during the ice collision process. The mechanical properties of ice related to strength and failure, however, show very complicated aspect varying with temperature, volume fraction of brine, grain size, strain rate and etc. So it is nearly impossible to establish a perfect material model of ice satisfying all the mechanical characteristics completely. Therefore, in general, ice collision analysis was carried out by relatively simple material models considering only specific aspects of mechanical characteristics of ice and it would be the most significant cause of inevitable errors in the analysis. Especially, it is well-known that the most distinctive mechanical property of ice is high dependency on strain rate. Ice shows brittle attribute in higher strain rate while it becomes ductile in lower strain rate range. In this study, the simulation method of ice collision to ship hull using the nonlinear dynamic FE analysis was dealt with. To consider the strain rate effects of ice during ice-structural interaction, strain rate dependent constitutive model in which yield stress and hardening behaviors vary with strain rate was adopted. To reduce the huge amount of computing time, the modeling range of ice and ship structure were restricted to the confined region of interest. Under the various scenario of ice-ship hull collision, the structural behavior of hull panels and failure modes of ice were examined by nonlinear FE analysis technique.