Advanced Sea Chest Geometries for Enhanced Thermal Deicing in Polar Navigation Ships

Polar navigation demands robust thermal management systems to prevent ice blocking in seawater cooling systems, which is critical for polar navigation. Current anti-icing architectures for disperse ice regions cannot make full use of thermal deicing, resulting in insufficient heat transfer and severe mechanical energy losses in dense ice regions, which eventually cause seawater system ice blockage. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is employed to investigate the underlying mechanisms of mechanical ice blockage and thermal deicing performance, and the mutual inhibition mechanism between geometric and thermal deicing is elucidated. Two alternative geometric designs for enhanced thermal deicing efficiency are proposed, i.e., a looped flow structure and a curved porous partition. Computational results demonstrate that both designs can maintain the thermal deicing efficiency at 100% with minimal head losses. Mechanistically, these configurations suppress the “short-circuiting” of hot reflux and prolong the heat exchange duration. The findings successfully resolve the intrinsic trade-off between geometric anti-icing performance and thermal deicing efficiency, thereby providing valuable theoretical insights and engineering guidance for cooling system design operating in ice-covered waters.