Study on icebreaking performance of the Korea icebreaker ARAON in the arctic sea

Abstract

A full-scale field trial in ice-covered sea is one of the most important tasks in the design of icebreaking ships. The first Korean icebreaking research vessel ‘ARAON’, after her delivery in late 2009, had a sea ice field trial in the Arctic Sea during July-August, 2010. This paper describes the test procedures and data analysis on the icebreaking performance of the IBRV ARAON. The data gathered from the icebreaking performance test in the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea during the Arctic voyage of ARAON includes the speed and engine power of the ship as well as sea ice thickness and strength data. The air temperature, wind speed and heading of the ship were also measured during each sea ice trial. The ARAON was designed to break 1 m thick level ice with a flexural strength of 630kPa at a continuous speed of 3knots. She is registered as a KR POLAR 10 class ship. The principal dimensions of ARAON are 110 m, 19 m and 6.8 m in length, breadth and draft respectively. She is equipped with four 3,500kW diesel-electric main engines and two Azipod type propulsion motors. Four sea ice trials were carried out to understand the relationship between the engine power and the ship speed, given the Arctic ice condition. The analysis shows that the ARAON was able to operate at 1.5knots in a 2.5m thick medium ice floe condition with the engine power of 5MW, and the speed reached 3.1 knots at the same ice floe condition when the power increased to 6.6MW. She showed a good performance of speed in medium ice floe compared to the speed performance in level ice. More detailed analysis is summarized in this paper.