23rd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, 8-13 September, 2002, Toronto, Canada
Paper ICAS 2002-4.6.3

RIGID BODIES IMPACTS ON WATER SURFACE. NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL ACTIVITY

M. Anghileri
Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Keywords: impact on water, fluid-structure interaction, sph method

The study of hydrodynamic impact between a body in motion and free water surface finds applications, in aeronautical fields, in splashdown and ditching problems. In this work an experimental and numerical activity has been faced to study the behaviour of simple bodies during the impact against water. The study started with simple perpendicular impacts of a rigid sphere, passing then to impacts with semi-cylindrical and semi-pyramidal shapes with also horizontal component of the velocity. All the specimens have been designed to be considered fundamentally rigid during the impact. This choice has been done in order to focus the attention on the water impact, leaving out the problems of structure deformations during impacts, faced in other works. The numerical study has been supported by the experimental activity carried out also with the aim of comparing and completing bibliographic results.

view full paper