Radical New Icebreaker Will Travel Through the Ice Sideways

cylonlover writes "Given that icebreakers clear a path for other ships by traveling through the ice head-on (or sometimes butt-on), then in order for one of them to clear a wider path, it would have to be wider and thus larger overall ... right? Well, Finland's Arctech Helsinki Shipyard is taking a different, more efficient approach. It's in the process of building an asymmetric-hulled icebreaker that can increase its frontal area, by making its way through the ice at an angle of up to 30 degrees."

Comments

been working on it for some time

[Trepidity]

Fwiw, the Finns have been researching this idea for a while now; interesting to see it actually being built. Here is a 1999 paper [pdf] from one of Arctech Helsinki's parent companies studying the feasibility of such a design, which has some good information on the details.

Icebreakers work from above

[Teun]

Conventional ice breaking is done by the weight of the ship, the shape of the bow allows them to slide on top of it and once far enough the ice underneath will break, doing this sideways will be rather nasty for the stomach of the sailors on board.

Providing they have the horsepower it can be done in a relatively smooth way or they need to regularly back up for a new run onto the ice.

The ship in the article is 'only' fit for up to 60 cm. in sideways and 100 cm. of ice in regular mode, not exactly a lot of obstruction when you consider the typical ice sheet north of Russia is between 1.2 and 2.5 m. thick.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-09/russia-building-worlds-largest-nuclear-powered-icebreaker

Re:Icebreakers work from above

[pijokela]

It's meant for the Gulf of Finland near St. Petersburg. A PDF report at http://www.baltice.org/ shows that the thickest ice during 2011-2012 winter was 50cm.

It's true that as Russia is more and more interested in exploiting the arctic sea, they will need bigger things.