Hayo Hendrikse braved the wilds of the Arctic and overcame a serious illness while conducting research for his doctoral thesis. On Friday, 20 January it became the 8,000th doctoral degree to be conferred at TU Delft.
The very first one was during a ceremony in 1906 for a student named Nicolaas Söhngen that studied interactions between organic life and hydrogen and methane. Only two doctorates were issued that year and it would take another 19 years for the university to reach its hundredth in 1925. The 7,000th was awarded in May of 2014.
Vibrations in ice
Like many before him, Hayo Hendrikse worked hard on his research. The Civil Engineering and Geosciences student spent five years on his project, which focused on vibrations in ice that can dramatically impact offshore structures located in the Arctic Ocean and the Baltic Sea. In recent years, power companies have searched for ways to make use of these regions’ natural resources. While many critics have concerns about what might happen if oil rigs set up shop across the Arctic, others have argued that it could be an ideal locale for far more environmentally-friendly operations.
A primary hurdle that these companies currently face is how to construct and maintain offshore structures that can withstand these regions’ relentless environments. Advancements in engineering have improved their safety standards since an infamous incident nearly caused the Molikpaq platform to collapse in 1986. However, the limited number of structures in the Arctic means that energy companies may not have enough hands-on experience in dealing with the frosty conditions up there. Subzero temperatures and vibrations in ice can definitely wear these structures down over time.
Bending a paperclip
“It’s kind of like bending a paperclip,” Hendrikse said. “You can only do it so many times until it breaks. In the past there have been more severe incidents, with lighthouses in the Baltic Sea being pushed over by the ice and jacket structures in the Bohai Bay partially collapsing as a result of the interaction between ice and structure.”
Hendrikse was no stranger to this problem when he began his research. He also studied ice-induced vibrations while working on his master’s degree. For his PhD, he travelled to the Arctic while working with SAMCoT, an innovative Norwegian organisation that develops sustainable marine and coastal technology. He also helped conduct experiments at the large ice basin research facility at the HSVA in Hamburg that led to the development of a phenomenological model that can help predict ice-induced vibrations.
Design tool
“We have made a model which can simulate this ice behaviour and shown that with the model we can explain and reproduce trends in all past full-scale and model-scale observations and data,” Hendrikse said. “We are now close to providing a design tool for the industry.”
A sudden case of Acute Sarcoidosis forced Hendrikse to go on sick leave for a little over a year but he bounced back and managed to complete his research in 2016. In addition to becoming the 8,000th student to receive a doctorate from the university, he was also rewarded with a Cum Laude. Hendrikse plans to continue working on the model over the next two years and hopes to finalise it while collaborating with his partners and fellow researchers.
Hendrikse, H., ‘Ice-Induced Vibrations of Vertical Sided Offshore Structures’, Promoters: Metrikine, A. and Løset, S., Defence: January 20, 2016
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