Ice basin tests for ice-induced vibrations of offshore structures in the SHIVER project

With the recent surge in development of offshore wind in the Baltic Sea, Bohai Sea and other ice-prone regions, a need has arisen for new basin tests to qualify the interaction between offshore wind turbines and sea ice. To this end, a series of model tests was performed at the Aalto ice basin as part of the SHIVER project. The tests were aimed at modeling the dynamic interaction between flexible, vertically-sided structures and ice failing in crushing. A real-time hybrid test setup was used which combines numerical and physical components to model the structure. This novel test setup enabled the testing of a wide range of structure types, including existing full-scale structures for which ice-induced vibrations have been documented, and a series of single-degree-of-freedom oscillators to obtain a better understanding of the fundamental processes during dynamic ice-
structure interaction. The tests were primarily focused on the dynamic behavior of support structures for offshore wind turbines under ice crushing loads. First results of the campaign show that the combination of the use of cold model ice and not scaling time and deflection of the structure can yield representative ice-structure interaction in the basin. This is demonstrated with experiments during which a scaled model of the Norströmsgrund lighthouse and Molikpaq caisson were used. The offshore wind turbine tests resulted in multi-modal interaction which can be shown to be relevant for the design of the support structure. The dataset has been made publicly available for further analysis.