Oden Arctic Technology Research Cruise 2015

Abstract

In the autumn of 2015, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat (SPRS) performed a research cruise, named the "Oden Arctic Technology Research Cruise 2015" (OATRC2015) involving the two Swedish icebreakers Oden and Frej in the international waters north of Svalbard. The ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company supported and participated in OATRC2015. The overall objective of OATRC2015 was to perform a safe cruise collecting valuable and important scientific data and to conduct full-scale field trials for testing of key technologies. The scientific scope of OATRC2015 included three major fields of studies, namely: 1) collection of full-scale data necessary to build, calibrate and validate numerical models for floaters in ice, 2) collection of full-scale data necessary to build, calibrate and validate numerical models for Ice Management operations, and 3) collection of data for health, safety and environmental research. This paper presents OATRC2015, including the objectives of the expedition, and provides an overview of the performed research and the major findings. Several companion ATC 2016 papers are complementary to this paper.

Parallel channels' fracturing mechanism during ice management operations. Part II: Experiment

“…Within the simulator, the outgoing floe size was assumed to be equivalent to the spacing between two successive parallel channels (i.e., produced floe size L : Channel spacing h  1:1). Similar floe size distributions were also observed in other ice management trials (Farid et al, 2014, Lubbad et al, 2012, Lubbad et al, 2013. However, to the authors' knowledge, until now, there are no existing theoretical formulations with well-controlled tests in relation to the parallel channel fracturing mechanisms that are reported in the literature.…”

“…Two icebreakers (Oden and Frej) were employed during the research cruise in the Arctic Ocean (around 82 o N and 16 o E). Both icebreakers are heavily instrumented for various research activities (Lubbad et al, 2016). Performing the ice management trials using a range of supporting hardware and software were among the prioritised activities , Hamilton et al, 2016.…”

“…In Paper I, a theoretical model concerning an edge crack's propagation was proposed and formulated to predict 1) the maximum channel spacing max h beyond which long cracks cease to develop; and 2) the maximum ice floe size MCD L that can be generated between two parallel channels. In this paper (i.e., Paper II), we report two dedicated field tests during the Oden Arctic Technology Research Cruise in 2015 (OATRC2015) in the Arctic Ocean (Lubbad et al, 2016). With the icebreaker Oden, the first parallel channel test was carried out on September 26 th from 13:00 to 14:00 (unless…”

Ice Condition Assessment Using Onboard Accelerometers and Statistical Change Detection

“…3) Section (3) presents the results from the differential entropy based classification of ice conditions. The section contains a plot of the entropy (31), and a colourbar, which indicates the results of the classification using the thresholds defined in Table V. 4) Section (4) gives the results of the hypothesis test.…”

SAMCoT: Leveraging Cross Sector Collaboration to Drive Sustainable Energy Developments in the Arctic

“…This numerical tool will not only be calibrated against measured data from small-scale tests of floaters in the ice basin, but also compared to field observations as obtained from Associated Projects in SAMCoT, such as the research expedition to the waters Northeast of Greenland using the Oden Arctic Technology Research Cruise (Lubbad et al, 2013). The Industry Advisory Committee of SAMCoT has clearly steered the direction of this research from the beginning, such that the outcome will be useful for implementation in the industry.…”