Advances in Simulator for Arctic Marine Structures

Arctic business is developing within the sectors of marine operations related to offshore oil and gas, mining, seafood, tourism, scientific expeditions, and world trade shipping. As offshore activities in the Arctic is a relatively new field, with only a handful relevant operations to draw experience from, and since full-scale trials are extremely expensive, there is an expressed need for more detailed and cost-efficient analysis and design review of concepts based on numerical simulations. Over the years, various numerical simulators, with different levels of technical readiness, have been developed to address issues related to Arctic Offshore Engineering. This paper focuses on the development of the Simulator for Arctic Marine Structures (SAMS), its basic theories and recent engineering applications. These include structural damage assessment for simulating the impact between a wave driven glacial ice feature with a semi-submersible structure; the decision-making support by ice load calculations on a shipwreck in the Arctic; and various Arctic vessel navigation simulations. The technical advancement in terms of multi-body dynamics, ice fracture mechanics and hydrodynamics that the simulator is built on is manifested. The presented engineering applications signify the importance, the versatility and maturity of SAMS in dealing with complex ice – structure interaction issues at different scales and at various levels of complexities.