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54 SAMC
o
T • Annual report 2012
like the rest of the energy-hungry world, are looking to
the north for future supplies. And while the ice may be
rapidly melting, it is still around in a myriad of shapes,
forms and sizes, causing vibrations. The phenomenon
is the same, but the challenge is immense compared
to that of the radio antenna. Furthermore, solving one
problem always contains the risk of creating another.
Global approach
It is hardly an accident that Andrei Metrikine has been
invited to join both SAMCoT’s scientific advisory commit
tee (SAC) and the leadership of Work Package 3, “Fixed
Structures in Ice”. His qualifications were revealed in a
presentation in Delft where SAMCoT director Sveinung
Løset was present. The two were soon involved in excit
ing conversation and before long Metrikine was invited
to Trondheim. “I think they like my expertise because
it differs slightly from the rest of the team since I have
worked with vibrations of various structures in wind and
water. This gives me a somewhat global theoretical point
of view,” he says.
Really, really interested
Andrei Metrikine is truly enthusiastic about SAMCoT:
“What I like most of all, is the team of really, really inter
ested engineers. When you combine SAMCoT’s own
team of very strong researchers with the most powerful
offshore companies sending their best R&D people, you
get this result. This is not given. Quite often you don’t see
this kind of drive. SAMCoT meetings always have a high
nerve. Everybody is interested, we know what we want
and we have real cooperation. This is how it should be.
We see the value of each other.”
Engineering as art
Working in such an atmosphere would be a true asset
under any circumstances. The task of ice versus fixed
structures makes it all the more valuable. Metrikine
illustrates: “Take a cube of silicon used in the manufac
ture of computer chips. You can describe what happens
with the cube under loading: you can introduce simula
tionsandapplymulti-scale theoriesat theatomic,molec
ular and macro level and then the model can mimic the
reality. But silicon is much easier than ice, being a very
well-structured material. Ice isn’t. We cannot know with
certainty its material structure in every particular case.
That’s where art comes in, trying to find a model that
describes and solves. The main challenge is to model
ice without knowing the details. We have to be able to
identify and focus on only truly significant properties.
True physics never goes without lyrics. If we are weak
humanitarians we will never succeed. The major thing is
to see reality, extract the most important processes and
make a model. To run algorithms is also a challenge but
it contains much less of an art.”
Maths and sports
Andrei Metrikine comes from a family of mathemati
cians. Both his parents are mathematicians. His parents
wanted him to go a school where math was taught at a
high level. His grandmother, a teacher of math at that
same high level school, protested: “We can teach him
maths at home. Let him study something normal.”
The young Metrikine was sent to a school where focus
was placed on sport. He learned volleyball, rowing, table
tennis and other sports. In parallel, under his mom’s
pressure, he studiedmusic. Later on he became passion
ate about history in general and the history of science in
particular: “I think it is important to be piece of a chain.”
“Meet a Nobel Prize Winner”
As a post-doctoral researcher in 1995, Andrei Metrikine
met Vitaly Ginzburg who later won the Nobel Prize for
Physics for his pioneering contributions to the theory
of superconductors and superfluids. Ginzburg invited
Metrikine to present his research at his famous seminar.
In order to receive this invitation, Metrikine was given
three minutes to explain his topic and succeeded. At that
time, he was working on the ground vibrations induced
by high speed trains and approached the problem by
comparing it with radiation of electromagnetic waves.
Ginzburg, being an astro-physicist, liked the approach
and the lecture and invited Metrikine to write an article
to a special issue of the journal on achievements of
physics which was dedicated to Ginzburg’s 80th anniver
sary. “It gave me a big boost. I think every scientist
should try to meet a Nobel Prize Winner at least once,”
Andrei Metrikine says today.
Professor Jukka Tuhkuri
of Finland has worked
with ice mechanics and ice engineering for more than
20 years. He and his group at Aalto have for the last
10 years worked with numerical simulations with the
Discrete Element Method (DEM).
Touch ice*
Spin-off is fun. Who would have thought that ice expert
Jukka Tuhkuri was attractive to the forestry guys? Well,