Ice studies for the North Caspian Sea

The North Caspian Sea is frozen from November to March. Large ice fields, thickness 0.5 to 1.5 metre become mobile under the effect of wind. The ice is a serious threat to the drilling and production facilities. Colliding ice can impose huge forces onto structures. Moreover, ice can form rubble piles more than 10 metre high and rubbling ice can encroach onto an island. The ice climate in the North Caspian Sea is unique in the world, in particular because of the scale and the shallowness of the area.

Since 1997 Witteveen+Bos Kazakhstan participated in studies to determine the ice characteristics and to design structures to intercept and to retain the ice. WBK has unique expertise on the design aspect related to ice in the North Caspian. We used geotechnical Finite Element Model PLAXIS to model ice-soil-structure interaction to design barriers to protect the drilling and production facilities against ice invasion and impacts.