Ship resistance when operating in floating ice floes: A combined CFD&DEM approach

Whilst climate change is transforming the Arctic into a navigable ocean where small ice floes are floating on the sea surface, the effect of such ice conditions on ship performance has yet to be understood. The present work combines a set of numerical methods to simulate the ship-wave-ice interaction in such ice conditions. Particularly, Computational Fluid Dynamics is applied to provide fluid solutions for the floes and it is incorporated with the Discrete Element Method to govern ice motions and account for ship-ice/ice-ice collisions, by which, the proposed approach innovatively includes ship-generated waves in the interaction. In addition, this work provides two algorithms that can implement computational models with natural ice-floe fields, which takes floe size distribution and randomness into consideration thus achieving high-fidelity modelling of the problem. Following validation against experiments, the model is shown accurate in predicting the ice-floe resistance of a ship, and then a series of simulations are performed to investigate how the resistance is influenced by ship speed, ice concentration, ice thickness and floe diameter. This paper presents a useful approach that can provide power estimates for Arctic shipping and has the potential to facilitate other polar engineering purposes. •The interaction between a ship, waves and floating ice floes is achieved by a coupling CFD&DEM approach.•The model is the first one that includes ship-generated waves in the ship-wave-ice interaction process.•Natural ice-floe fields are incorporated with simulations, accounting for random floe locations and different sizes of floes.•Ship resistance in floating ice floes is shown to be accurately predicted.•The relationships of ice-floe resistance with ship speed, ice concentration, ice thickness and floe diameter are analysed.