Abstract

In the marginal ice zone (MIZ), waves entering from the open ocean often induce collisions between neighboring ice floes. Due to limited observational data, it is not known to what degree wave-induced collisions contribute to the stress within the ice and to the dissipation of wave energy in MIZ . In this paper, wave-induced collisions between ice floes are analyzed with a numerical, discrete-element model. The model simulates surge motion of an ensemble of ice floes on a prescribed wave field. It is shown that the collision pattern depends on ice concentration, wave steepness, floe size relative to wavelength, floe-size distribution, as well as the restitution coefficient and drag between the ocean and the ice. For relatively large ice floes, the results are very sensitive to the formulation of wave forcing and ice–water drag. If the forcing correctly takes into account floe size relative to the wavelength, the model accurately reproduces surge RAOs of single floes, as well as accelerations and forces of floes impacting a structure.