Research on the Ice Resistance and Propulsion Performance of Polar Ships via the CFD-DEM Coupling Method

Polar marine equipment plays an important role in Arctic engineering, especially in the development of polar ships and ice-class propellers. When polar ships navigate in brash ice channels, the brash ice not only increases resistance but also has adverse effects on their propulsion performance. On the basis of coupled computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and the discrete element method (DEM), this paper aims to numerically investigate the resistance and propulsion performance of a polar in a brash ice channel while considering the rotation status of the propeller by both experimental and numerical methods. Both ship resistance and ice motion under Froude numbers of 0.0557, 0.0696, 0.0836, 0.975, and 0.1114 are studied when the propeller does not rotate. The influences of the rotating propeller on the ice brash resistance and flow are discussed. The thrust due to the propeller and ice resistance in the equilibrium state are also predicted. The errors between the thrust and total resistance are approximately 1.0%, and the maximum error between the simulated and predicted total resistance is 3.7%, which validates the CFD-DEM coupling method quite well. This work could provide a theoretical basis for the initial design of polar ships with low ice class notation and assist in planning navigation for merchant polar ships in brash ice fields.