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• ANNUAL REPORT 2013
class of structural reliability techniques, Farid-Afshin is
studying another approach for evaluating the structural
safety, i.e. non-probabilistic class methods. The idea is
that such methods may be more suitable to situations
of severe uncertainty such as the Arctic. He has made a
preliminary review of these methods as part of his PhD
coursework and is currently working on implementing
them.
Farid-Afshin was also involved in the planning of the ice
management tests for the research cruise OATRC2013.
He participated in the cruise and returned with useful
field experience, data and ideas for his further work.
Farid-Afshin, in collaboration with SMSC and Statoil has
started to analyse the data and is working on conference
publications for IAHR 2014.
Iceberg drift and towing in pack-ice
Drifting icebergs and sea ice may pose serious threats
to offshore structures in the Arctic. They can expose the
structures to extreme environmental loads during the
exploitation period or even during the relatively short
exploratory drilling periods. Ice surveillance (detec-
tion, tracking and forecasting, etc.), threat evaluation,
physical ice management (use of icebreakers, iceberg
towing vessels, etc.) and possibly adding disconnection
capabilities to the structures are parts of the so called
ice management system (IM), whose purpose it is to
reduce or avoid the ice actions on structures.
PhD candidate Renat Yulmetov is studying the drift and
towing of icebergs in pack-ice. In 2013, he studied the
mechanics of contact between ice floes and an iceberg.
He constructed a numerical model where he is now able
to simulate the free drift of icebergs in the presence of
sea-ice.
Renat Yulmetov took a step further towards modelling
icebergs towing in pack-ice by developing a numerical
scheme to generate an ice field. The generated ice
field fulfils requirements regarding concentration,
thickness, floe size distribution, roundness of the floes,
etc. The Mean Calliper Diameter (MCD) was chosen as
a measure of ice floe sizes. A literature review showed
that the MCD of drifting ice is distributed according to
the power law with negative exponent. The value of the
exponent depends on mechanisms of floes’ formation
and can be expressed as a function of the distance to the
ice edge. Based on the results from this work, Yulmetov
wrote a conference paper that will be published in
IAHR’14
Yulmetov is active in gathering and analysing field-data
about iceberg drift. He presented two papers at POAC’13
based on data gathered during OATRC2012 and RV
Lance2012. He participated also in OATRC2013 and he
will present a paper at IAHR’14 based on the material
from that cruise.
Figure 13. Two different perspectives of an ice field gener-
ated on 5×5 km domain with concentration of 0.3.