High-Fidelity Propeller-Ice Interaction Studies using CFD-DEM-MBD Coupling

Climate change with ice melting at a quick pace has changed the sea transportation perspective. The possibility of using Northern sea routes, which connects East Asia with Europe, can now cause a sizable reduction in shipping distance and cost. However, one of the major concerns for ships operating in icy water is the extreme loads applied to the propulsion system due to propeller-ice interaction. Due to the limitation of experimental setups and over-simplified numerical studies, the propeller-ice interaction process and resultant loads are not fully understood yet. Hence, a high-fidelity numerical study is conducted in this work to evaluate the loads on propellers in close vicinity of and in contact with an ice block. A coupled CFD, DEM (Discrete Element Method) and MBD (Multibody Dynamics) approach is employed in which the ice block is modeled as a collection of point particles around a dynamic propeller with prescribed rotational speed. The studies are performed for a model of the marine propeller KP505 with the diameter of D=0.093 m operating in various flow conditions.