In recent years, Arctic issues have become increasingly “hot” as a result of new oil and gas development plans for the Arctic, particularly in Russia.

Offshore and marine activities in the Arctic are expected to increase over the next decade. The amount of summer sea ice is shrinking, and increasing oil and gas prices are expected as a consequence of the world’s increasing energy demands. The shrinking amount of summer sea ice presents previously unexplored opportunities for transportation of goods from Europe to Asia through the North-east Passage along Russia’s northern coastline.

Although oil and gas exploration in the Arctic is not new, the expected trends of increasing energy demand and increasing oil and gas prices have already led to a revamped focus on the remaining but substantial hydrocarbon reserves in the Arctic. Some of these reserves have previously been considered as commercially unrecoverable, but there are now efforts made towards the development of new technology for safe and sustainable operations in the Arctic. DNV has made a strategic decision to be part of this development, and the Arctic Research Programme has been set up to develop the necessary competence, methods and tools through research and innovation.

About us
The purpose of the Arctic Programme is twofold:

• To support current DNV business units in dealing with Arctic issues
• To develop methodologies and tools for future DNV Arctic services.

Our competence development is achieved through research and innovation, sponsored not only by internal funding but also by external joint industry projects in cooperation with some of DNV’s key customers.

At present, our work is concentrated on the topics of:

• Understanding, predicting and mitigating marine icing of Arctic vessels and offshore structures operating in Arctic conditions
• Predicting the response of floating structures in ice
• Developing guidelines for the design of Arctic offshore structures in compliance with the new ISO 19906 standard.

Our group is also in the process of completing strategic research projects within the field of advanced computational mechanics, where the aim has been to explore novel ways of solving future numerical design problems.

The relevance of our work
The Arctic environment presents challenges for marine and offshore operations that require innovative thinking on the design of Arctic vessels and offshores structures. The operational capabilities of traditional vessels and offshore structures do not meet the requirements for operating in Arctic conditions. These are conditions in which the working environment can be particularly harsh: there is prolonged darkness, snow precipitation, freezing temperatures, sea ice in different forms, and ice accumulation (or icing) from sea spray droplets impacting on the structure.

With relevance to the latter issue, one of our projects aims to provide engineering tools for predicting marine icing, as well as to consider possible mitigation measures against it. As another example, one of our projects aims to develop guidelines on estimating characteristic ice loads on offshore structures. In general, there is a need for regulations and guidelines on the design and winterization of Arctic vessels and offshore structures, and our projects are aimed at preparing DNV for the ability to provide relevant Arctic services in the very near future.

As mentioned above, oil and gas exploration in the Arctic is not a new activity, and both fixed and moored floating structures have been used previously. For example, moored floating structures have been used for oil field development and production in the Beaufort Sea and off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. It is expected that floating systems concepts will also be important in future Arctic oil and gas exploration and production activities.

Moored floating structures in particular present additional design challenges over those associated with fixed structures, due to the difficulties in predicting the dynamic response under the complicated ice-structure interaction processes. The responses of interest are not only the vessel offset due to the incoming drifting ice but also the load effects in the mooring system and in the riser system. The load effects occur due to impacts from ice features of different sizes and due to the dynamic response of the vessel/structure during the complicated ice-structure interaction process. The incoming sea ice fails in completely different ways depending on the configuration of the structure, and the ice loads can be substantial. Large ice features, such as ice ridges, rubble fields, multiyear ice and icebergs present major challenges for the design of appropriate station keeping systems.

Despite previous experiences with the operation of moored floating structures in ice, there is still limited knowledge about the physics of the ice-structure interaction processes and about how to formulate effective computational tools for predicting the associated vessel/structure response and load effects. One of our projects aims to investigate suitable mathematical models for capturing the behaviour of moored floating structures in ice, with a view towards the development of predictive tools for response and load effect assessment services