Peridynamic modelling of polycrystalline ice

Due to the harsh environment of the Arctic region, ship structures must be designed to withstand ice loads in case of a collision between a ship and ice takes place. Although experimental studies can give invaluable information about ship-ice interactions, full scale tests are very costly to perform. Therefore, computer simulations can be a good alternative. Ice-structure interaction modelling is a very challenging process. First of all, ice material response depends on many different factors including applied-stress, strain-rate, temperature, grain-size, salinity, porosity and confining pressure. Furthermore, macro-scale modeling may not be sufficient to capture the full physical behaviour because the micro-scale effects may have a significant effect on macroscopic material behaviour. Hence, it is necessary to utilize a multiscale methodology. By taking into account all these challenging issues, a state-of-the-art technique, peridynamics can be utilized for ice fracture modelling. Peridynamics is a non-classical (non-local) continuum mechanics formulation which is very suitable for failure analysis of materials due its mathematical structure. Cracks can occur naturally in the formulation and there is no need to impose an external crack growth law. Furthermore, due to its non-local character, it can capture the phenomenon at multiple scales. In this study, the utilization of peridynamics will be presented to simulate mechanical behaviour of polycrystalline ice by modelling individual grains.