Numerical Modeling of Water Ice Impact Destruction

Water ice behavior under dynamic loading depends on many conditions, including temperature, freezing process and chemical composition of impurities. Ice specimens produced in laboratory conditions can only imitate natural ice to a certain extent, and strength testing of natural ice is limited by working in the field under severe Arctic conditions. Development of icebreakers and construction of oil production facilities in the Arctic require deep understanding of ice destruction processes. This research applies a hybrid grid-characteristic numerical method on unstructured tetrahedral grids to problems of impact loading of water ice. Viscoelastic material model of ice is supplemented by a discrete destruction model that implements Tsai-Wu failure criterion with linear strengthening. Problem statements with ball-shaped impactor and shock unloading are considered. Three-dimensional dynamic patterns of velocity vector and stress tensor are obtained. Damaged areas are obtained, analyzed and compared to similar experimental statements.