Line contact induced bending failures of ice sheets during ship-ice interactions

Recent field observations from the Xuelong icebreaker indicate that line contact induced bending failures of ice sheets are prevalent during consecutive ice breaking processes. However, the corresponding ice force and breaking length have rarely been studied. Against this backdrop, this study proposes a model with seven independent input parameters to characterize the loading scenario without assuming ice sheet geometric symmetry. The normalized governing equation based on the theory of thin plates on elastic foundations is solved by the finite element (FE) method, and the results are further utilized to train a XGBoost model. The established line contact induced bending failure model is implemented into a non-smooth discrete element method (DEM) framework for ship-ice interaction simulations, and the numerical result for ice resistance of the Xuelong 2 icebreaker in level ice is validated against model test data. This study facilitates a more accurate real-time description of ice-sloping structure interactions.