Ice engineering challenges for offshore wind development in the Baltic Sea

Baltic Sea offshore wind development has seen a rapid growth in the past decade with major projects developed and constructed in the Southern Baltic Sea and attention now slowly turning to the more challenging Northern Baltic Sea areas. With respect to sea ice engineering, the focus the past years has been on determination of global loads on the support structures, in particular development of ice-induced vibrations has received much attention. In this paper specific sea ice engineering questions encountered in discussions with designers of offshore wind support structures between 2018 and 2023 are presented. The focus is on questions which do not seem to have a straightforward answer yet. These relate to the completeness of the load case table, interpretation of the ice strength coefficient CR, jamming and sheltering effects for multi-legged structures, design of appurtenances for ice loading, ridge loads, and sea ice dynamics in the presence of wind farms.