A black-box-model-enhanced interaction method for water-wave scattering by large group of arbitrary-shaped ice floes in Arctic route planning

Abstract

This study develops an enhanced interaction (EI) method for efficient prediction of the water-wave field among a large group of ice floes in Arctic route planning. A novel black-box model, termed the wave component detection (WCD) method, is proposed for constructing the diffraction transfer matrix (DTM) within the framework of interaction theory. The DTM, which is conventionally mathematically intractable for three-dimensional ice floes with arbitrarily complex geometry, can now be determined using this readily implementable and universally applicable approach. Without loss of generality, four ice-floe shapes are taken as example models to demonstrate the capability of the EI method. Operation rules are recommended for the practical implementation of the EI method. The error range of the EI method is identified in scenarios with multiple ice floes of different sizes and distances.The super-high efficiency of the EI method is demonstrated in cases involving an ultra-large group of ice floes. It takes less than 1.5 hours to calculate wave amplitudes at 160,000 locations in the wave field of 1,800 ice floes (based on 1,440,000 boundary elements) on an ordinary personal computer with a 2017-released CPU. Based on the wave field predicted by the EI method, users can take advantage of the wave-sheltering effect of the ice floes to optimize routes. For demonstration, the dynamic programming strategy is used to recommend optimized navigation routes among 1561 ice floes of mixed shapes. The average wave amplitude the ship encounters can be reduced to about half of the incident wave amplitude.

31 pages, 37 figures; submitted to Cold Regions Science and Technology on March 22, 2025; received first revision request on March 18, 2026; submitted first revision on April 7, 2026