Abstract

Human activity in the Arctic increases each year as the climate and polar ice conditions continue to evolve. The polar regions have great potential for both fossil fuel and renewable energy, human curiosity has lead to more cruise ships traveling in polar icy waters, and commercial vessels see the northern routes as new alternatives for international trade. With increased human activity there is an interest to travel at higher speeds when the ice conditions are sufficiently open. The operation of a ship at high speed in open water surrounded by level ice can be considered a novel case of operation in confined waters. The ice sheets on either side of the vessel and the bottom act to restrict the flow generated by the ship. Other more common examples of confined waters are transit in rivers, fjords, or manmade canals. Whenever a waterway is confined, whether it be by ice or land, the ship is subject to unsteady motions from soliton generation and substantial changes in the sinkage, trim, and drag. In this talk the operation of ships at high speed in an open-water lead is examined to understand how proximity to ice influences the ship performance. Computational fluid dynamics is used to predict the hydrodynamic solution when a vessel is traveling at wide range of forward speeds, including Froude numbers of greater than one. The influence of channel width and ice thickness are investigated. Also the influence of the ship-wave on the ice sheet is examined to assess the role of ship waves on the breakup of the ice.