Vertical Wedge Water-Entry through Experiments and Simulation to Explore Three-Dimensional Hydrodynamic Flow Characteristic

Slamming is a critical loading condition that governs design of high-speed small craft. Due to sparse pressure measurements in previously conducted experimental studies and uncertainties in numerical simulations, a combined study to fully understand the three-dimensional fluid-dynamics effects on the bottom of a wedge is presented herein. The focus of this paper is on a comparison of experiments and simulations on the water-entry of a rigid wedge that represents a transverse wedge cross section of a Generic Prismatic Planing Hull (GPPH). The results show that the simulations are in very good agreement with the experiments and that these 3D effects can accurately be modeled.