Sea ice presents a significant challenge for Arctic offshore operations in support of resource development. Over the years there has been much work aimed at improving of understanding of the science and mechanics of ice. The complexity and extent of operational ice conditions presents a challenge. The GEM model has been developed with the goal of simulating offshore operations in ice from a practical engineering perspective. The GEM uses ‘event mechanics’ and equations of motion rather than continuum mechanics as the building blocks of the simulation. An impact between a ship and an ice floes is one example of a single event. The paper presents the concept of GEM and describes the various operational scenarios that GEM can model. GEM models thousands of ice floes along with ships and offshore structures. GEM can simulate both local and global loads, and so be used for structural and performance assessment. GEM can model ice management operations and look at system effectiveness. One unique feature of GEM is its speed. GEM can model, for example, operations with a square kilometer in hyper-real time. 100x real time as easily achievable on single laptop computers. Future plans aim at much larger problem domains and much faster simulation speeds. The paper describes the current state of GEM, presents plans for future developments and discusses the benefits of the approach.
展开▼
