A Computational Method For Ice-breaking Loads And Capability Of Icebreaker

In recent years, with the increasing of the explotation of oil resources in cold regions and the development of polar scientific investigation, icebreaker has been used in some important tasks, such as waterway opening, polar rescue and material supply. Therefore, more and more emphasis is attached on the design of the icebreaker of superior performance.Because of the complexity of ice characteristics and the particularity of the icebreaker operating environments, which leads that the theory research on icebreaker developed very slowly, and empirical formulas which were obtained by experiments are used to predict the motion and ice loads of icebreakers by scholars in different countries now. Therefore, a theoretical method is expected to be established to predict the ice loads of icebreakers, the ship motion response and the ice-breaking capability.Based on the background mentioned above, both the theoretical and the numerical simulation methods are applied to research on the problem mentioned above. The main research contents are as follows,1. Based on summing up the physical and mechanical properties of the sea ice and analyzing the form of interaction between sea ice and icebreakers and the failure mechanism of the sea ice, a theoretical method for ice-breaking loads which is suitable for engineering calculations is established according to the elasticity theory.2. Considering the variation of the ice loads with time under the "continuous" ice-breaking, the 3-DOF motion equation of an icebreaker is established. Then, the motion response and ice-breaking capability of icebreakers are obtained by solving the equation in the time domain.3. Based on the basic principle and the key technique of explicit nonlinear finite element method, a finite numerical simulation method of icebreaker ice collision is explored.