Ice action on ships and offshore structures is commonly determined by calculating the contact ice pressure. The aim of this paper is to describe the empirical background for determining the ice pressure. This review article describes six different test series where ice edge indentation and contact ice pressure have been investigated. These test series are ice pressure measurements onboard IB Sisu in the Baltic in 1977, pendulum tests carried out at Arctec in Ottawa, Canada, in 1979, laboratory and full scale ice crushing tests at WARC in 1988 and onboard IB Sampo 1989, medium scale indentation tests on Hobson's Choice Ice Island 1990, ice crushing tests at NRC, Ottawa 1992 and the JOIA tests in Hokkaido 1996-1999. These tests were selected as at each series a new phenomenon was observed. The aim of the paper is to introduce the main features for ice-structure contact empirically through the description of tests. The paper is concluded with a short description of the existing models for ice pressure, especially to gain an insight and highlight the main observations in each test series and how the models for ice pressure have developed based on the observations.This article is part of the theme issue 'Modelling of sea-ice phenomena'.
Keywords: ice crushing process; ice failure; ice pressure; ice strength; ice–structure contact.
© 2018 The Authors.