Statistics of Ice Loads on Inclined Marine Structures Based on Numerical Experiments

This article focuses on the statistics of ice loads on wide, inclined, offshore structures. The results are based on hundreds of two-dimensional combined finite-discrete element method simulations on ice-structure interaction process. In the simulations, an intact ice sheet collides with, and fails against, a structure. The simulations are sensitive to initial conditions and by varying them, different ice loading processes can be generated even if the simulation parameters are not changed. The statistics of the maximum global horizontal ice load values and the trends in the loading process are studied using the data from the simulations. The analysis shows that the distributions for these maximum load values are non-normal and that numerous repeated measurements are required to reach reasonable estimates for ice loads under given conditions. The results further show that the interaction process evolves and that the observations based on short interaction processes may lead to inaccurate ice load estimates. The sources for the stochasticity of the loading process are also discussed; scatter in the ice load data is inherent to the ice-structure interaction process.