Advance in Ice Mechanics in Finland

Abstract

In Finland, 110 years of winter navigation has been a natural initiator of ice mechanics research. It has brought with it sea ice monitoring and statistics, ice forecasting, the testing of mechanical properties, ship and icebreaker model testing and full-scale trials, ice resistant aids-to-navigation, and theoretical modelling and numerical simulations. Lately, a lot of ice mechanics research has been devoted to arctic offshore applications. A summary of the major developments is given in this paper.