Euler-Lagrange coupling with damping effects: Application to slamming problems

During a high velocity impact of a structure on a nearly incompressible fluid, impulse loads with high-pressure peaks occur. This physical phenomenon called 'slamming' is a concern in shipbuilding industry because of the possibility of hull damage. Shipbuilding companies have carried out several studies on slamming modeling using FEM software with added mass techniques to represent fluid effects. In the added mass method inertia effects of the fluid are not taken into account and are only valid when the deadrise angle is small. This paper presents the prediction of the local high pressure load on a rigid wedge impacting a free surface, where the fluid is represented by solving Navier-Stokes equations with an Eulerian or ALE formulation. The fluid-structure interaction is simulated using a coupling algorithm; the fluid is treated on a fixed or moving mesh using an ALE formulation and the structure on a deformable mesh using a Lagrangian formulation. A new coupling algorithm is developed in the paper. The coupling algorithm computes the coupling forces at the fluid-structure interface. These forces are added to the fluid and structure nodal forces, where fluid and structure are solved using an explicit finite element formulation. Predicting the local pressure peak on the structure requires an accurate fluid-structure interaction algorithm. The Euler-Lagrange coupling algorithm presented in this paper uses a penalty based formulation similar to penalty contact in Lagrangian analyses. Both penalty coupling and penalty contact can generate high frequency oscillations due to the nearly incompressible nature of the fluid. In this paper, a damping force based on the relative velocity of the fluid and the structure is introduced to smooth out non-physical high frequency oscillations induced by the penalty springs in the coupling algorithm. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.