Elastic mode expansion in smoothed particle hydrodynamics framework for hydroelasticity and validation with 3D hydroelastic wedge impact experiments

Abstract

To perform an efficient hydroelastic simulation with violent free surface interactions, we extend δ+ SPH to elastic modes of a floating structure through GPU parallelization, which includes the correction of velocity divergence with the deformation and computation of the structure's strain. Free surface interaction is supplemented with a segmented particle shifting and tensile instability correction. We validate the developed hydroelastic simulation for experiments of elastic wedge impacts with aluminum and composite panels. Through comparative analysis with different deadrise angles and impact velocities, we find that the improved free surface interactions reduce early separation from the deforming panels, leading to better prediction of the wedge acceleration and reasonably well-matched profiles of the free surface and panel deformation. The marginal difference is attributable to the water passing through the gaps of the physical test model built in three dimensions, which is absent in the simulation setup. Comparing strain time series, measured at two locations on the elastic panels, through three sets of simulations in different dimensions of the simulation set-up and mode shapes, we see that three-dimensional simulation with correct mode shapes in three dimensions accurately predicts the strain time series at both locations as well as the wedge acceleration. The hydroelastic simulation through the modal expansion in GPU parallelization can be utilized to efficiently predict various hydroelastic phenomena with violent free surface interactions.