Study on the Damage Characteristics Caused by Collision between Ship Structure and Level Ice

Abstract

Due to the global warming, the thickness and coverage area of the Arctic sea ice gradually decrease, which make Arctic marine transportation and exploitation for oil, gas and other resources possible. For the Arctic route, it can greatly shorten the voyage from Northeast Asia to Europe and reduce the transport costs and time on the sea. Meanwhile, the passing ships have to meet more rigorous environment and more accidents occur such as hull-ice collision accidents or low temperature damage and so on. Therefore, the development of new sea route needs to do more relative researches to ensure the safety of hull structure. The problem of hull-ice collision is a serious one, which is also very important to be researched in the whole collision issues. Compared with the other parts such as stern and stem, the hull structure, especially for the side hull structure, may be regarded as the weakest part in the collision accidents, due to its relative less safe distance. However, the side structure has the biggest share among the whole structure and also has the higher ratio of collision accidents. Therefore, most of the researchers take their attentions on this field to improve the crashworthiness of side structure, which avoids the serious damages and improve the survivability of ship in the collision accident. This paper mainly uses numerical simulation method to simulate and reproduce the problem of ship-ice collision. It includes that the impact on structural damage by ship-ice collision is evaluated in different cases and then finds the dangerous characteristics of structural collision. Through the analysis results, it summaries the advantages and lacks from the existing structural form to improve the modeling of hull – ice simulation. After the research, it can present a relatively clear understanding about the respond of hull structure under ice loads and provide a basis and some reference for new structure design and construction rules. The main aspects of this thesis are as follows: 1. To establish a numerical simulation model which can truly response ship-ice collision. 2. Summaries the damage characteristics of collision between ice and hull structure of ordinary ships and develops the corresponding assessment methods. 3. Based on the above two points, discussed and developed new concepts about rationalizing procedures for simulation of hull – ice collision.