Icebreaker ships break up ice sheets to allow uninterrupted activity in harbors during winter. They are equipped with strong propellers, a steel body, powerful engines, and sensitive navigational tools. Modern icebreakers have a stepped, canted hull designed to help the ship lift off a block of ice. They are increasingly used on scientific research expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic regions.
An icebreaker ship creates wide passages through the ice sheets that form around harbors during winter to allow uninterrupted activity. Lakes, deltas, bays, and inlets in Scandinavia, around Siberia, and in the North American Great Lakes are susceptible to thick ice extending from the land into the body of water. This would prevent ships importing and exporting goods or carrying tourists from accessing coastal cities for several months if the ice did not break up.
An icebreaker ship is equipped with strong propellers, a steel body, powerful engines, and sensitive navigational tools. Their primary duty is to break ice into small enough pieces that they melt, go out to sea, or at least pose no threat to smaller ships. Of course, the outer front of the ship, the hull, must withstand freezing temperatures without warping or weakening. This is the area that stubborn ice hits first, so it is carefully designed and reinforced.
Modern icebreakers have a stepped, canted hull designed to help the ship lift off a block of ice. Once sitting partially out of the water, it breaks up vertically, using the power of gravity on its enormous mass. The propellers also help push the front of the ship down to crush the ice, churning up large chunks underwater. Increasingly, icebreakers are being used on scientific research expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic regions, rather than simply to keep trade routes operational.
An icebreaker’s engines must be powerful enough to drive the giant propellers at the rear and front of the ship that allow it to navigate with precision and confidence. These diesel engines are housed within an incredibly strong steel frame that will not collapse or break. Even a single hole would not sink the entire ship. In some cases, the ship gets its power from a nuclear source, so as not to carry as much flammable fuel on board.
There’s more to breaking the ice than ramming the ice. The icebreaker must navigate the ocean without getting stuck, while opening a path that other ships can use. The ice initially doesn’t have much place to go, so sometimes the ship’s nuclear reactor heats the water to melt the ice during the first run. In subsequent races, weeks apart, the ice will drift into the open water and melt on its own.
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