A simulation approach for local ice loads on ship structures in level ice

Abstract Ships are operating in ice-covered waters and level ice interaction represents one of the relevant interaction scenarios. Furthermore, level ice is the standard ice condition for testing and performance assessment. Therefore, various approaches exist to obtain relevant loads for this interaction type. While limitations of existing numerical approaches will be presented, the approach sought-after in this paper is the simulation of the ship-ice interaction by means of a dedicated contact algorithm including contact detection, force evaluation and cusp formation for arbitrary bow shapes at the waterline. As a result, the ice load can be obtained locally across the bow and compared to full-scale measurements within a validation case study. Furthermore, the breaking resistance can be calculated from the local ice load distribution. The MATLAB code of the presented simulation approach is provided along with this paper.