Non-Simultaneous Failure of Ice in Front of Multi-Leg Structures

Because the multi-leg jacket structure is the major type of offshore structures in the Bohai Sea, the study of non-simultaneous failure of ice on multi-leg structures is important. However, the non-simultaneous failure has not been considered in engineering design until now, obviously resulting in costly design and notable waste. To resolve this problem, this paper, by means of analysis of experimental data, calculates the coefficient of the non-simultaneous failure for the double-pile structure, the square four-leg structure, the single-line multi-pile structure, and the conical structure, respectively, and provides some reference criteria for engineering design.

Failure of Semi-infinite Beams of Variable Thickness and Curvature on Elastic Foundation under Contact Loading

In early winter it is usual, in cold regions, that ice features approach offshore structures, like offshore platforms, impacting them, in a slow process of constant deformation build up. Interaction follows, in many cases, up to the point where ice-failure caused by bending fracture takes place. This supposes very large contact forces that the structure has to resist. Therefore, quantification of these efforts is of vital importance to the structural design of platforms. In several designs, these platforms are constructed with inclined walls so as to cause ice to fail in a flex-compression mode. In such a case the ice feature is analyzed as a beam constituted of a linear elastic material in brittle state with constant ice thickness. The simplification renders the problem solvable in a close form. However, this hypothesis goes against field observations. Marine currents action, wind and the sequence of contacts among features lead to thickness variations. Here this factor is addressed in the construction of a model, for harmonic forms of variation of thickness profile, and the accompanying curvature variations, whose solution determines field variables used to address the failure question. Due to the deformation dependency of the loading, a numerical scheme for the two-point boundary value problem in the semi-infinite space is developed. Failure pressures are computed based on a Rankine locus of failure. Variations of the order of 20% in the failure loads, as compared to the uniform beam model, are observed.

Wave-ice dynamical interaction:a numerical model and its application

In this paper,an ice floe inner stress caused by the wave-induced bending moment is derived to estimate the stress failure of ice floe.The strain and stress failures are combined to establish a wave-induced ice yield scheme.We added ice stress and strain failure module in the Finite-Volume Community Ocean Model(FVCOM),which already includes module of ice-induced wave attenuation.Thus a fully coupled wave-ice dynamical interaction model is established based on the ice and wave modules of FVCOM.This model is applied to reproduce the ice and wave fields of the breakup events observed during the second Sea Ice Physics and Ecosystem Experiment(SIPEX-2)voyage.The simulation results show that by adopting the combined wave-induced ice yield scheme,the model can successfully predict the ice breakup events,which the strain failure model is unable to predict.By comparing the critical significant wave height deduced from strain and stress failure schemes,it is concluded that the ice breakup is caused by the strain failure when wave periods are shorter than a threshold value,while the stress failure is the main reason for the ice breakup when wave periods are longer than the threshold value.Neglecting either of these two ice-break inducement mechanisms could overestimate the ice floe size,and thus underestimate the velocity of the ice lateral melt and increase the error of simulation of polar ice extent.