S. Korea's top shipbuilders join Inha University to develop homegrown ice-load analysis platform

As the Arctic shipping route opens up and polar resource development accelerates, South Korea's academic and industrial sectors are pushing to develop homegrown technologies for the fast-growing polar vessel market.

Inha University announced Tuesday that a research team led by Kim Yu-il, a professor in the Department of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, has launched a joint technology development project with Samsung Heavy Industries, Hanwha Ocean, HD Hyundai Heavy and Korean Register (KR).

At the heart of the collaboration is the development of a homegrown analysis platform capable of precisely predicting the forces a vessel experiences when colliding with ice and integrating that data with structural response analysis.

The project will be led by Kim's laboratory, the Multidisciplinary Structural Mechanics Lab (MDSL) at Inha University.

The team plans to develop an integrated software tool called iFAST (Ice Force Assessment Simulation Tool) that combines ice-load prediction and ice-structure interaction analysis into a single platform.

Ice load is a critical variable in polar vessel technology, determining both safety and economic viability. Accurately calculating the impact and forces generated when a vessel or offshore structure collides with ice is essential to designing an appropriate hull structure.

The ability to simultaneously analyze the process of ice fracturing and the resulting structural response of a vessel plays a particularly important role in the design and verification of icebreakers, LNG carriers and polar offshore installations.

The challenge is that while South Korea's shipbuilding industry possesses world-class construction capabilities, it has in some technical areas continued to rely on foreign technologies and empirical formulas for the precise analysis of polar environments.

The decision by Inha University and the country's three largest shipbuilders to undertake this joint research goes beyond a conventional academic project — it is a strategic move aimed at securing independent design and verification capabilities for the polar vessel market.

Growing interest in the Arctic shipping route, driven by changes in Arctic sea ice, combined with expanding prospects for polar resource development, is fueling demand for specialized vessels and offshore structures capable of operating in icy waters. The technology race surrounding high-value segments — LNG carriers, icebreakers and polar offshore platforms — is intensifying as a result.

This has sharpened calls for Korean shipbuilders to move beyond manufacturing excellence and acquire the foundational technologies needed to predict polar conditions and verify vessel safety.

Each partner takes on a distinct role in developing iFAST. The three shipbuilders will feed in technical requirements drawn from actual vessel design and production operations, while Korean Register will contribute to the development process from the perspective of safety regulations and verification standards.

The Inha University research team will draw on its accumulated expertise in structural-response-based load estimation, digital twin technology and complex load environment analysis to develop the core algorithms and integrated software platform.

The team plans to incorporate digital twin technology — which replicates actual vessels or offshore structures in a virtual environment — to build a system capable of comprehensively analyzing ice fracture processes, hull structural responses and ice-structure interactions.

If the technology reaches commercialization, it is expected to enable more precise analysis from the design stage through to safety verification for polar vessels.

The project is also significant for its industry-academia structure. The three major Korean shipbuilders — globally competitive in their field — and Korean Register, the vessel safety certification body, have been involved from the earliest stages of research, substantially increasing the likelihood that findings will be applied in real industrial settings.

"The significance of this research lies in the fact that shipyards, a classification society and academia are developing polar response technologies together," Kim said. "We aim to build an analysis platform grounded in proprietary technology and contribute to strengthening the international competitiveness of Korean shipbuilding in the fields of polar vessels and offshore structures."