Experimental and numerical investigation on hydroelastic impact of one free-drop wedge with aluminum stiffened panels

Design against slamming loads is the concern of ship designers from the view point of strength for the safety of bow structures. Model test technique using water entry of free-drop bodies into calm water is applied in this paper to study the hydroelastic impact. One 3D aluminum wedge with dead-rise angle 20 degrees is designed. The stiffened panel on each side of the wedge is made up of 3 longitudinal stiffeners and 2 transverse frames with different sizes of cross sections. The explicit Finite Element Method (FEM) using the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) algorithm is applied to investigate the hydroelastic impact of this aluminum stiffened panels. The acceleration motion, stress responses on longitudinal stiffeners and transverse frames of the stiffened panels are obtained. The numerical results are validated with the experimental results from drop tests with and without roll angles. This solution shows the capability and accuracy of ALE algorithms and its potential to predict the hydroelastic slamming of local structures on ships.