Oil spreading in surface waters with an ice cover

A study of oil spreading in surface waters in the presence of a floating ice cover is presented. The ice can be solid or fragmented. Both axi-symmetrical and uni-directional spreading are studied. The report describes the analytical and numerical model development, the experimental set-up, results from the laboratory experiments, and their comparison with the derived theory and the numerical simulation. To analyze the spreading of oil under solid ice, new equations are derived. These equations consider gravity (buoyancy) - inertia phase, gravity (buoyancy) - viscous phase, and the termination of spreading during the buoyancy - surface tension phase. The derivation considers both the constant discharge mode and the constant volume mode. Therefore, a complete description of the spreading phenomena from the time of initial spill to termination of spreading is presented. The emphasis of the study is on the dominant spreading mechanism for oil under ice, which is the buoyancy-viscous phase