An Example of Numerical Ice Tank Based on DEM Simulation and Physical Model Testing

The determination of ice loads on polar ships and offshore structures is of great significance for ice-resistant design, safe operation, and structural integrity management in ice-infested waters. The physical model testing carried out in ice tank/basin is usually an important technical approach to evaluate the ice loads, however, the high cost and time consumption make it difficult to perform multiple repetitions or large number of trials for this purpose. Recently, the rapid development of high-performance computation techniques provides a usable alternative where the numerical methods represented by the discrete element method (DEM) have made remarkable contributions to the ice load predictions. On basis of DEM simulation validated by physical model testing, numerical ice tank can be developed as an effective supplement to its counterpart. In this paper, such an example of numerical ice tank adopting GPU computational mechanism and DEM modelling algorithm was established with respect to the small ice model basin of China Ship Scientific Research Center (CSSRC-SIMB). The numerical ice tank was calibrated and further optimized with physical model tests on typical structures of vertical cylinder and inclined flat plate in level ice sheets by making agreements of both globe value and time history of the ice loads. Then it was practiced for modelling the tests of Wass bow advancing in level ice performed in SIMB separately. It is demonstrated by the comparisons of ice failure details and ice loads that the numerical ice tank can precisely simulate the ice-structure interactions and determine the ice loads under the same initial conditions of physical model testing. In the end, the advantages as well as the challenges of the numerical ice tank are discussed.