IceTower project sparks interest


New JIP considers the full- scale monitoring of ice loads


In the near future, the amount of marine and


offshore activities in arctic areas is expected to


increase substantially. For the safe and sustainable performance of these operations, extensive


knowledge about the ice environment and its


interaction with structures is essential.


A cold area loading tower has been designed by Bluewater for loading oil tankers. The tower will be installed at a location where the shallow water is covered with ice for about nine months of the year. The design loads consider ice floes up to 2.4 m thick, approaching the tower at a speed of up to 3 knots. The installation of the tower provides a good opportunity for gathering more field data concerning ice-structure interaction. In the IceTower JIP a monitoring system will be installed on the tower to continuously capture both the local ice conditions, for example the ice thickness and velocity, and the response of the tower. Samples will occasionally be taken to obtain ice properties including density and flexural strength. The monitoring campaign will last for three winter seasons.


Solange van der Werff s.v.d.werff@marin.nl


16 report


Four-year project A number of correla- tion studies will be performed using the ac- quired full-scale data. Model tests have been executed in the ice basin of HSVA in Hamburg to which the full-scale data will be compared. Empirical formulations for the prediction of ice loads on fixed circular structures will be applied to the tower in the monitored ice conditions and the results will be compared to the measured response of the tower.


Based on these studies, the involved parties, mainly research institutes and class societies, aim to obtain more knowledge on ice-struc- ture interaction. The IceTower JIP proposal was launched in April and several initial meetings already took place. As the tower is scheduled to be installed in summer 2015, it will be instrumented during its construction later this year. The JIP will formally start on September 1, 2014 and will run for four years.


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