Numerical study of ice loads on and oil boom and ice floe drift in front of the boom

Global warming has led to significant changes in the Arctic ice condition,characterized by a gradual transition from level ice cover to broken ice zones. This change has increased vessel traffic along Arctic shipping lanes and also introduces the risk of oil spills accidents in the ice floe areas. As a tool for oil spill containment,oil booms face complex challenges when deployed in Arctic ice floe environments. However,existing studies have not sufficiently investigated the collision process between ice floes and oil booms under dynamic water flow conditions. In this study,the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) method coupled with Finite Element Method (FEM) is used to investigate the drift process of ice floes in front of a fixed rigid oil boom and the ice loads acting on the boom during its interaction with a finite number of rectangular ice floes. The effects of ice floe size and ice concentration on ice floe drift behavior and boom ice loads are comprehensively analyzed. The results show that the ice floes parameters significantly affect their drift behavior in front of the boom. Particularly,as the number of ice floes increases,the ice floes are more likely to escape along the boom edge,resulting in interception failure. Furthermore,under the same ice concentration,larger ice floes tend to produce short-duration high collision forces,while smaller ice floes are more likely to generate nonlinear and sustained collision forces.This proposed method can provide support for the deployment and protective design of oil booms in Arctic ice floe areas.