A Numerical Study on the Water Impact of the Rigid/Elastic Box-Like Structure

Recent damages to the box-like structures caused by wave slamming have made it necessary to study the impact problems of this kind of structure. This paper showed findings from numerical simulations of the rigid/elastic structures, aiming to gain insights into the characteristics of the problem. The results of the rigid cases showed the significance of air compressibility during the impact process, while the slamming phenomena became quite different without the effect. In the elastic cases, the trapped air made the structure vibrate at frequencies much smaller than its eigenfrequencies. Besides, the structural deformation made it easy for the trapped air to escape outwards, which weakened the air cushioning effect, especially at high impact velocities. The above analysis gives the results when the structural symmetry axis was vertical to the water(vertical impacts). In addition, the results were given when the axis was oblique to the water(oblique impacts). Compared with the vertical cases, the impact phenomena and structural response showed asymmetry. This work used the computational fluid dynamics(CFD) method to describe fluid motion and the finite element method(FEM) for the deformable structure. A two-way coupling approach was used to deal with the fluid-structure interaction in the elastic cases.