Experimental and numerical validation of an analytical hydro-plastic model for the prediction of structural damage in extreme water slamming

Abstract

Extreme water slamming poses great threats on the safety of ships and offshore structures at sea, which may in the extreme conditions cause large structural damage, progressive collapse of structures and even fatalities. The interaction between hydrodynamic loads and large plastic structural deformation termed as hydro-plastic slamming, however, has not been well understood. Recently, Yu et al. (2019a) proposed an analytical hydro-plastic model for the prediction of permanent deflections of beams and stiffened panels in extreme water impacts and verified the model by numerical simulations. This paper aims for further verification of the hydro-plastic model by comparison with recent drop tests of aluminum plates carried out by Sintef Ocean and numerical simulations of water impacts on a semi-submersible column using the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) method. The drop tests focus on water impacts of bare plates while the ALE simulations yield plastic damage of stiffened panels. Experimental set-up of the drop tests and numerical modelling of water impacts on the semi-submersible column are described. Structural damage of plates and stiffened panels from the experiments and numerical simulations respectively are used to verify the hydro-plastic model. Its validity and accuracy are discussed.