BOEMRE Awards Nearly $500,000 for Technical Study on Arctic Sea Ice
WASHINGTON —
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE)
today announced it has awarded a contract totaling $499,981 to
Dartmouth College to conduct a technical study on how Arctic sea ice
fractures and breaks as it flows in open waters.
The study will be conducted by researchers at
Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of
Engineering. BOEMRE will oversee the study, which
will provide insights into how free-flowing, fractured ice
can impact offshore structures. Energy exploration and production
facilities operating offshore Alaska, and other cold regions, must
be designed to resist forces and damage that may result from contact
with sea ice. Through a combination of micromechanical modeling and
systematic experimentation using facilities of Dartmouth’s Ice
Research Laboratory, researchers will work to identify important
physical characteristics of ice conditions and quantify the rate at
which ice becomes fractured and weakened.
“Technical studies such as this help us ensure that engineering
standards for facilities and structures operating in the harsh
Arctic environment are adequate to withstand specific aspects of
harsh conditions,” said BOEMRE Director Michael R. Bromwich. “We are
pleased to partner with Dartmouth College to better understand the
dynamic nature of sea ice and the forces it exerts on manmade
structures.”
In addition to conducting the
research, Dartmouth College is contributing $102,909 to the cost of
the study. Research will begin during the final
quarter of 2011 and continue through 2014.
This contract is being awarded through BOEMRE’s Technology
Assessment & Research (TA&R) Program. The TA&R Program supports
research associated with operational safety and pollution prevention
as well as oil spill response and cleanup capabilities. For
more information about BOEMRE’s Technology Assessment and Research
program and additional studies, go to:
http://www.boemre.gov/tarphome/index.htm.
Contact: BOEMRE
Public Affairs