Ice trails with “Le Commandant Charcot” for load assessment

The Arctic Ocean is in a process of significant changes, which also raises the interest in exploring these changes. This also concerns the performance of ships and how different operational profiles together with climate change are affecting current and future designs. This paper presents ice trials with a PC2 ice classed ship during a Trans-Arctic voyage, where continuously data such as ice thickness and accelerations are measured. From these data the number of ice impacts is determined which is used in a probabilistic extreme ice load assessment. The probabilistic ice pressures are compared with the design pressures from the Polar Ice Classes. The results indicate a significant loading of the structure with a potential to exceed Ice Class values. The analysis and results contain uncertainties, as the applied state of the art needs to be updated with new measurements and data accounting for climate change. A detailed analysis during one ice trail with constant power indicated that ridges contribute significantly to the number of impacts, while recent research on Arctic survey indicates that the ice surface becomes smoother and the number of ridges reduce.

Subjects

Accelerations

Extreme load assessment

Ice

Ship-borne measurements

Trans-Arctic

DDC Class

600: Technology

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Ice trails with “Le Commandant Charcot” for load assessment