Hydrodynamic shock of elastic structures impacting on the water: theory and experiments

The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical and experimental analysis of the response of an elastic system carried on board a wedge-shaped body impacting the water surface. The wedge entering the water has a sudden deceleration with shock characteristics, resulting in a short-time duration and a sharp peak value. On the other hand, the carried system undergoes an oscillatory motion induced by the inertial load generated by the impact. The study of this problem reveals the occurrence of special conditions in the response of the on-board oscillator, depending on the parameters associated with the water entry problem, that lead to large elastic forces. The experiments show that when varying the characteristic natural frequency of the on-board oscillator, critical impact conditions occur characterized by very large amplitudes of the structural response that confirm the theoretical predictions. The analysis, based on the water shock spectral response developed by the authors in some previous papers, is generalized here and validated experimentally. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.