The work deals with ships advancing steadily through a compact ice sheet (so-called level ice) floating on the water surface. The mechanics of this process can be subdivided into 1. the breaking of the ice sheet, 2. the rotation of the generated floes from their initial horizontal position to one tangential to the ship hull at the bow, and 3. the sliding of the floes along the hull and under the unbroken ice sheet besides the ship, or into the broken canal behind the ship. This work faces only the sliding motion of the floes (part 3 above) and focuses especially 1. on the forces between the floes and the hull and 2. on predicting the path of the floes sliding along the hull. The latter determines (a) the clearing ability of vessels, i.e. the amount of ice covering the water surface behind the ship and (b) the amount of ice drifting into the propeller range. These objectives have been achieved by . performing tests with segmented icebreaker models to identify the distribution of the contact force between ice and ship hull, . performing tests with pressure transducers built into models of ship hulls to measure the so-called low pressure phenomenon, . measuring pressures at a ship's hull during full-scale trials to confirm the existence of the low pressure phenomenon, . developing a theory and a numerical model to predict the path of floes sliding along the hull.weiterlesen