Abstract
Abstract The interaction of sea ice with offshore structures is an important engineering concern in ice-infested areas. This paper presents a procedure to evaluate ice loads acting at the sloping offshore wind turbines in the Estonian territorial waters at the Baltic Sea, where the waters are seasonally covered by ice. Region-specific characterization of ice thickness and ice days is done with the help of assessing ice maps from a period of 15 years. For each year, the number of days with ice coverage and thickness are determined. The extreme value probability distribution for annual maximum ice thickness is determined by fitting an asymptotic extreme value distribution to the maximum annual ice thickness. For ice-structure interaction, a numerical ice model suitable for the Baltic Sea ice is implemented. The ice is treated as an isotropic, brittle material described by stress-strain curves for compression and tension. Numerical assessment is conducted to evaluate the ice load history, load maxima, and variations for a selected wind turbine foundation design.
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