Numerical simulation of circular disks entering the free surface of a fluid

In this paper numerical simulations of the irrotational fluid flow associated with the entry of circular disks of a given mass into a semi-infinite fluid domain in the limits of very low to moderate Froude numbers are reported. This work is motivated by an experimental study performed by Glasheen and McMahon who investigated the low-Froude-number water entry of circular disks and found a linear relationship between the cavity seal depth and the Froude number and also showed that a single value of a modified drag coefficient is sufficient to predict the drag force on the disk. The numerical calculations performed in this paper confirm these experimental findings for steady cavity regimes and identify the ranges of Froude number and dimensionless mass values for which these results hold. Excellent agreement between the numerical computations and analytical velocity predictions, as well as the experimental cavity seal depth measurements, are obtained although the agreement between the measured and the computed drag coefficient values is not as good. The cavity seal depth and the drag coefficient are also found to depend on the disk mass and the numerical results in this paper show that for any disk of dimensionless mass M there exists a value of the Froude number for which the cavity dynamics are steady. Also, a very low-Froude-number regime in which gravitational forces are dominant and for which the cavity dynamics are qualitatively different than for low-to-moderate-Froude-number cases is also numerically explored in this paper. Finally, a bifurcation in the cavity seal mechanism from deep seal to surface seal was found at a Froude number F=105. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.