Modification of ship routing algorithms for the case of navigation in ice (original) (raw)

Navigation in ice-covered waters has a number of specific features that distinguish it from the open water operation; they are the non-stationary ice conditions, ice channels on the fairways, and the additional opportunities such as the possibility to involve an icebreaker and change the mode of movement (sternor bow forward). All these features should be considered when solving the problem of ship route optimization in ice. In this paper, we propose the modifications of the well-known graph-based and cell-free (wave-based) mathematical methods of path finding to adapt them to the problem of route optimization in dynamic ice conditions considering all above-mentioned features. We formulated the versatile cost function that involves such factors as the total voyage time, fuel consumption, freight rates of ships and risks of ice operation. The optimization task is set in such a way to allow finding the route segments where the icebreaker assistance is economically proven and optimize ...