Ice-going merchant ships have been designed to be customised for operating in ice and open water. Merchantships operating in the Baltic Sea are required to be classified based on the Finnish-Swedish Ice Class Rules(FSICR) to operate at a minimum of 5 knots in an ice class brash ice channel. The performance can be verifiedby ice model tests. As merchant ships may perform at a relatively high speed in brash ice, the current modeltests may face challenges from the effect of hydrodynamics on the brash icebreaking process. In addition,some modern bow forms experience significant resistance by displacing brash ice mass sideways, which hasnot been realistically modelled with the current Froude-Cauchy scaling approach. Numerical simulations asalternatives for calculating ice resistance have shown their potential to assist model tests on ice performanceprediction. This report aimed to review previous studies on numerical simulating ships in a brash icechannel. The numerical methods of modelling brash ice were first reviewed. The reviewmainly focused on introducing the discrete element method for modelling brash ice.Other simulation methods used in brash ice modelling were also reviewed. Due to theimportant role of hydrodynamics, techniques of coupling the hydrodynamics to the DEMbrash ice simulation were reviewed. Finally, the discussion was given on the possibility ofusing an open-source platform by considering implementing the model testing techniquein the simulation.