Experimental and numerical study on water-entry impact of aluminum-plated structure

This paper aims to study the slamming-induced elasto-plastic response of aluminum structures.

In this paper, an aluminum scale model based on the hull structure of a real ship is designed, then drop tests of aluminum stiffened plates with a deadrise angle of 0° are conducted from different drop heights to investigate the slamming pressure and structural dynamic elastoplastic response. Finally, the slamming drop tests are validated by adopting explicit finite element technology based on the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Euler (ALE) algorithm.

The test results show that the saturated impulse phenomenon exists, and the final deformation of the stiffened plate is approximately linearly related to the drop height. The slamming pressure acting on the plate can be regarded as uniformly distributed. The numerical predictions are in good agreement with the experimental results.

The study provides experimental data on the aluminum stiffened plate structure design for high-speed aluminum ships and underwater vehicles.