Oblique water entry of a cone by a fully three-dimensional nonlinear method

Abstract

The hydrodynamic problem of a cone entering the water surface obliquely has been analyzed by the three-dimensional (3-D) incompressible velocity potential theory with the fully nonlinear boundary conditions on the moving free surface and body surface boundary. The time stepping method is used in the stretched coordinate system defined as the ratio of the physical system to the distance that the cone has travelled into water. The boundary element method is used to solve the potential at each time step. Both triangular element mesh and quadrilateral element mesh have been used. Discretisation of the body surface and the free surface is applied regularly during the simulation to account for their change and deformation, and data from the old mesh is transferred into the new one through interpolation. Both the dynamic and kinematic free surface boundary conditions are satisfied through the Eulerian form. In particular the free surface elevation and potential variation are traced at a given azimuth of the cylindrical coordinate system, in the direction parallel to the body surface or perpendicular to the free surface to avoid multi-valued function. Detailed convergence study with respect to time step and element size has been undertaken and high accuracy has been achieved. Results for the cone in vertical entry are compared with those obtained from the 2-D axisymmetric method and good agreement is found. Simulations are made for cones of various deadrise angles and different oblique entries and detailed results are provided.