Experimental study of ship resistance in artificial ice floes

Abstract

In this paper, a model-scale ship towing experiment is conducted to investigate the ship resistance in small ice floes. Instead of using refrigerated model ice, artificial ice floes made of Polypropylene (PP) is used in the tests based on the assumption that the dominant motion modes of small ice floes in water are rigid-body ones. The control parameters are further tailored to define the sizes and shapes of the artificial ice floes, whose specific compositions are determined based on the information from field observations. These ice floes are then randomly placed on the water surface in the Laboratory to approximate the realistic characteristics of ship resistance caused by small ice floes in practical conditions. The influences of Sea ice concentration, floes shapes and floes sizes on ship resistance vs velocity are investigated. Experimental results close to those obtained from other authors have been obtained, which indicates the feasibility of using PP-material artificial ice floes to measure ship resistance in waters covered with small ice floes subjected to low ice concentrations. Interesting phenomena observed in the experimental tests are also reported and analyzed.