Ice tank

An Ice Tank is a ship model basin whose purpose is to provide a physical modeling evironment for the interaction of ship, structures, or sea floor with both ice and water. Ice Tanks may take the form of either a Towing Tank or Manovering Basin.

Typically an ice tank is a refrigerated ship model basin that simulates ice using a mixture comprised mostly of water and chemical additives called dopants. Many unrefrigerated ship model basins use ice simulants such as paraffin wax. The clean up and handling of such stimulants often proves cumbersome. Using a refrigerated basin containing mostly water allows melting to be a convenient method of model ice clean up.

The challenge in ice modeling is the correct choice of ice simulant. Different simulants model ice differently. For example most icebreakers break ice by riding upward unto the ice and breaking downward by the weight of the vessel. In this case, correctly modeling ice's downward flexural breaking strength is most important. In the case of bridges or offshore structure, compressive and/or upward breaking strength may be of more interest. The effects of ice on ship propulsion often requires model ice density to be reduced by adding controlled amounts of gas or air durring the freezing process.

One of the first ice tanks to attempt to scale ice on a tow tank basin scale was the Krylov Institute using high concentrations of salt as a dopant to soften the ice.

Some of the Worlds Ice Tanks

Some Ice Tanks ranked by volume. Dimentions are given in meters.

Facility	Dimentions (m)	Location
[1] National Research Council of Canada NRCC-IOT	90 x 12 x 3.0	Canada
[2] HSVA, Large Ice Model Basin	78 x 10 x 2.5	Germany
[3] Aker Arctic Technology Inc. (Formerly Kvaerner Masa-Yards)	77.3 x 6.5 x 2.3	Finland
[4] Helsinki University of Technology	40 x 40 x ??	Finland
[5][6]CRREL	37 x 9 x 2.4	United States of America
[7]NMRI	35 X 6 X 1.8	Japan
[8]Krylov Institute	35 X 6 X 1.5	Russia
[9] HSVA, ENVIRONMENTAL TEST BASIN	30 x 6 x 1.2	Germany
[10] National Research Council of Canada NRCC-CHC	21 X 7 X 1.1	Canada