The ice load is an important factor for vibration and fatigue of ship and offshore structure in polar region. For analyzing the ice load on different type offshore structures, the bonding-breaking effect between bonded spherical elements, the expansion disk element, and the polyhedron element based on the Minkowski sum theory are respectively adopted to construct the discrete element model of sea ice. Additionally, the ice-induced vibration of the jacket platform is calculated by using the coupled discrete element-finite element numerical method. And IceDEM, a software tool for sea ice DEM simulation based on GPU is developed to improve the computational efficiency. The present study can not only promote the development of discrete element method in polar marine engineering but also assist the design of ship and offshore structure in ice-covered fields.

discrete element method  /  polar region  /  ice load  /  ship hull  /  offshore structure