Experimental investigation of ice cutting by high-pressure water jet: deicing on marine vessels

Arhin, Emmanuel Junior (2023) Experimental investigation of ice cutting by high-pressure water jet: deicing on marine vessels. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

Ice development on surfaces during winter or in severely cold climates affects several industries, including aviation, hydropower, telecommunications, navigation, electrical distribution, and transportation. The traditional technique of deicing maritime vessels with human labor is laborious and time-consuming especially when ice adhesion strength is high. Current alternative deicing technologies may be too expensive or impossible to implement. Since water is easily accessible to maritime operations and heat energy diverted from the engine to heat up the water, high-pressure water jet (HPWJ) is proving to be a useful deicing technology, which is the focus of our investigation. HPWJ is currently used in high-level precision manufacturing in the automotive, aerospace, building products, electronics, food, paper and steel industries. HPWJ has low efficiency in strong winds, especially when the stand-off distance is long and might damage equipment if the operation parameters are not adjusted appropriately. The main objective of this study is to investigate the combined effect of operational parameters including operating pump pressure, nozzle geometry, water jet temperature, and standoff distance on the depth of cut through an ice block at certain time of cut. The significance of the main objective is to maximize depth and width of cut in order to facilitate the delamination of ice accrued on surfaces. Ice was simulated in the lab by making ice blocks that were kept at -10 °C throughout the experiment. Preliminary cases were acquired using a factorial design of experiment at different levels with five parameters, including the nozzle type, yielding biased results. New cases were developed, and the measured responses were used to generate regression model equations for the four nozzle types. The models predicted depth of cut with a P-value less than 0.0001 and an F-value of 23.26 with 99% confidence, showing that the models are significant. Also, the Predicted R² of 0.7473 is in reasonable agreement with the Adjusted R² of 0.8166; i.e. the difference is less than 0. 2. According to the findings, the nozzle geometry has the greatest impact on the maximum depth of cut, followed by the time of cut, pump pressure, water jet temperature, and stand-off distance. Whereas the models predicted width of cut with a P-value less than 0.0001 and an F-value of 44.67 with 99% confidence, showing that the models are significant. The respective Predicted and Adjusted R² values of the width of cut are 0.8635 and 0.8973 and are in reasonable agreement with a difference of less than 0.2. Also, the nozzle geometry has the greatest impact on the maximum width of cut, followed by the stand-off distance, pump pressure, time of cut and water jet temperature. This study investigated the effectiveness of HPWJ deicing on maritime vessels. The optimization of operational parameters is used to develop a cuttability chart for various thicknesses of accumulated ice on the deck and various vessel surfaces. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first research on the combined effect of operating pump pressure, water jet temperature, standoff distance of the different nozzle geometries ( 0 ,15 ,25 and 40 ) on the depth and width of cut in ice blocks.

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