Author(s): Joachim Schwarz
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Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: The discovery of oil and natural gas in Arctic offshore regions stimulated governments, oil and engineering companies, and scientists to intensify research and development of icebreaking ships. First concepts of ice-breaking oil or LNG tankers required a power of 150 000 kW in order to manage the passage to and from the high Canadian Arctic. Through research and development and new ideas on how to break ice most efficiently, this power consumption could be reduced by about 50%; i. e. the icebreaking tanker would only need 75 000 kW. However, icebreaking ships of tanker size have not been built yet and the Canadian Arctic Pilot Project has been postponed for commercial, not for technical reasons. Technological progress has been demonstrated only by small icebreaking vessels which were used as pilot projects for predicting the icebreaking capability of large tankers. This paper tries to identify the progress which has been achieved during the last 10 years by comparing a few different icebreaker concepts. Subsequently, features of a modern icebreaker are presented.
Year: 1984