Sea ice from an engineer’s perspective

Abstract

Sea ice poses significant challenges to human activities in cold regions. These activities include, for example, winter navigation and offshore wind energy developments. Designing vessels and structures to withstand loads caused by sea ice requires a deep understanding of the mechanical behavior of sea ice. Ice engineering and ice mechanics provide the understanding that enables the development of safer and more efficient structures for operations in icy environments. This chapter introduces key topics in ice engineering, focusing on the engineering properties of sea ice and the mechanics of ice failure processes during ice interactions with structures. Various types of ice failure processes, each often associated with specific types of offshore structures, are described in detail. The chapter also describes how experimental research is conducted at both full and laboratory scales. In addition, the chapter highlights typical modeling techniques used in ice engineering simulations and summarizes essential features of ice engineering simulation tools. The chapter concludes with a discussion on future directions for ice engineering research, emphasizing its links to geophysical-scale sea ice dynamics. From the aspect of future sea ice cover and its behavior, one of the strengths of ice engineering is that it relies on ice properties, which can be measured. This allows for accounting for the effects of climate change on ice cover reliably.