Establishment and Verification of a Constitutive Model of Ice Material Considering the Effect of Temperature

Abstract

The increase in global warming has secured the arctic region as a research hotspot, and the existence of ice floes and massive icebergs poses a great challenge to the navigational safety of polar ships. For the finite simulation of ship–ice collisions, a reasonable description of the ice constitutive model is the most important factor for the accuracy of ice load prediction and structural deformation assessment. Due to the complex physical properties of natural sea ice materials, there are still many difficulties in achieving a widely accepted ice material model. In this paper, a constitutive model of ice material considering the influence of temperature is established and embedded into finite element software LS-DYNA, and the material property parameters are validated and analyzed. Then, the drop test in a published paper is recapitulated by the numerical simulation with the proposed method, and the results are compared. Good agreement is attained between the numerical simulation and published results. The influences of temperature and drop height are discussed, and the results show that both of them have an important effect on structural deformation. The research results can be used for ice load prediction and polar ship structure design.

A New Plastic Design Approach for the Vertical-Side-Plating Thickness of Ice-Strengthened Ships Suffering from Ice Floe Impacts

“…By analyzing the contact area-pressure curve, the influence of a temperature gradient on the impact force was studied. Yu et al [18] established an ice-material model considering temperature, and a drop-hammer-impact model between ice and stiffened plates was established by LS-DYNA software. The ice load and the structural deformation were studied.…”