Ice sheet failure mechanism is highly complex and has multiple modes of failure (crushing, flexural failure, radial and circumferential cracking, spalling and creep) which can occur simultaneously in ice-structure interaction. The capability of the Cohesive Element Method (CEM) to simulate realistic ice fracture phenomenon makes it a promising numerical method which can be developed into a useful numerical tool for design of offshore structures subjected to ice actions. In recent years, there has been greater interest and development of the CEM framework for ice-structure interactions (e.g. Guertner et al, 2009; Konuk el al, 2009; Guertner et al, 2010; Hilding et al, 2011; Liu and Wu, 2012). Most of the efforts have been dedicated to the demonstration of ice fracture and crushing in the event of an ice-structure interaction. However, there are a number of limitations and challenges which have not been fully addressed and these include the use of a uniform mesh with hexahedral elements, lack of convergence with mesh refinement, large variation in the properties of the cohesive elements, as well as assumptions made in model implementation. In this paper, a comprehensive survey of the literature on CEM applied to ice-structure interaction is presented. The advancement of the CEM till date is discussed and its limitations are exemplified with simulations carried out in this study. Approaches to overcome some of these challenges are proposed and supported by simulation results.
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