An ice tank is a

ship model basin A ship model basin is a basin or tank used to carry out hydrodynamic tests with ship models, for the purpose of designing a new (full sized) ship, or refining the design of a ship to improve the ship's performance at sea. It can also refer to ...

whose purpose is to provide a physical modeling environment for the interaction of ship, structures, or sea floor with both ice and water. Ice tanks may take the form of either a towing tank or maneuvering basin. Many un-refrigerated ship model basins use ice simulants such as paraffin wax, plaster, and mixtures of foam or plastic beads. The cleanup and handling of such simulants often proves cumbersome. What differentiates an ice tank from other ship model basins is that an ice tank has purpose built provisions into its structure for handling such material conveniently. Use of a refrigerated basin containing mostly water allows freezing and melting to be a convenient method of model ice preparation and cleanup.

Ice scaling

Ship model basins often simulate full-scale processes in miniature. Ships and structures are reduced linearly in size, and cubic in mass, displacement, and volume. The challenge in ice modeling is correctly reducing the ice properties of interest to provide an accurate simulation. Many factors and properties are of interest when simulating ice. The actual environment that will be simulated is of prime concern. For example, ice pieces flowing then jamming a spring river would be modeled very differently from a ship model traversing a simulated arctic ice sheet. Different again would be a ship traversing an area of loose broken ice pieces or pack ice.

Weakened ice method

One important factor in icebreaker model testing is the effect of changing ice strengths and thickness. For example: if a 1 to 30 scale is chosen, then the ship model is 1/30 the size. The ice used must also be 1/30 the thickness and 1/30 the strength. If one was to use pure-water ice, the problem is that pure-water ice does not soften. Many ice tanks simulate ice using a mixture consisting mostly of water and chemical additives called dopants, which are chemicals which reduce the melting temperature of pure water ice. Common dopants used are salt,

ethanol Ethanol (abbr. EtOH; also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound. It is an alcohol with the chemical formula . Its formula can be also written as or (an ethyl group linked to a h ...

ethylene glycol Ethylene glycol ( IUPAC name: ethane-1,2-diol) is an organic compound (a vicinal diol) with the formula . It is mainly used for two purposes, as a raw material in the manufacture of polyester fibers and for antifreeze formulations. It is an od ...

, and

urea Urea, also known as carbamide, is an organic compound with chemical formula . This amide has two amino groups (–) joined by a carbonyl functional group (–C(=O)–). It is thus the simplest amide of carbamic acid. Urea serves an important ...

. By using a sufficiently cold temperature, both water and dopant are frozen in solution together forming an ice sheet. This impure ice sh