MARICE project, 2013

The MARICE project was a multi-year collaboration between industry, institutes and academia to study the process of sea spray icing, or 'marine icing'. When wind and high waves whip sea spray onto a ship or rig, the resulting accumulation of ice can pose a risk to the safety of the vessel and its crew and jeopardize their ability to operate effectively.

The primary purposes of the project were to study ice accretion in arctic weather conditions by scientific experiments, to model this process using physically realistic simulations, and to obtain observations of sea spray icing on actual vessels. Ultimately, the goals also included improving understanding of marine icing and translating that knowledge into guidelines and recommendations for vessel design and operation, including emergency response.