China Ocean Eng., 2023, Vol. 37, No. 2, P.

333–342
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13344-023-0027-1, ISSN 0890-5487
http://www.chinaoceanengin.cn/ E-mail: coe@nhri.cn

A Numerical Study on the Water Impact of the Rigid/Elastic Box-Like

Structure
YANG Jian, SUN Zhao-chen*, LIANG Shu-xiu
State Key Laboratory of Coastal and Offshore Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China

Received August 13, 2022; revised November 8, 2022; accepted January 29, 2023

©2023 Chinese Ocean Engineering Society and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature

Abstract
Recent damages to the box-like structures caused by wave slamming have made it necessary to study the impact
problems of this kind of structure. This paper showed findings from numerical simulations of the rigid/elastic struc-
tures, aiming to gain insights into the characteristics of the problem. The results of the rigid cases showed the significance
of air compressibility during the impact process, while the slamming phenomena became quite different without the
effect. In the elastic cases, the trapped air made the structure vibrate at frequencies much smaller than its eigenfre-
quencies. Besides, the structural deformation made it easy for the trapped air to escape outwards, which weakened
the air cushioning effect, especially at high impact velocities. The above analysis gives the results when the structural
symmetry axis was vertical to the water (vertical impacts). In addition, the results were given when the axis was
oblique to the water (oblique impacts). Compared with the vertical cases, the impact phenomena and structural
response showed asymmetry. This work used the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method to describe fluid
motion and the finite element method (FEM) for the deformable structure. A two-way coupling approach was used to
deal with the fluid−structure interaction in the elastic cases.
Key words: water impact, fluid-structure interaction, air compressibility, box-like structures, two-way coupling

Citation: Yang, J., Sun, Z.C., Liang, S.X., 2023. A numerical study on the water impact of the rigid/elastic box-like structure. China Ocean Eng.,
37(2): 333–342, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13344-023-0027-1

1 Introduction (2009) and Seiffert et al. (2015) reported failures of coastal

Investigating water impacts is a continuing concern in
ocean engineering since extreme impact forces may cause
serious damage to structures. A considerable amount of lit-
erature about the problem has been published, and recent lit-
erature reviews are available (Dias and Ghidaglia, 2018;
Faltinsen, 2000). This paper studied the water impact of a
box-like structure. In engineering, the structure has the
applications such as coastal bridge decks with grids (Cuomo
et al., 2009; Seiffert et al., 2015) and perforated caissons
(Wang et al., 2022; Sun, 2020), as shown in Fig. 1. It can be
seen that the structures may become inundated and air is
trapped, causing the force to increase. The box-like structure
can also be used to reduce the impact force, as Kim et al.
(2021) suggest. They studied the effect of a surface pattern
applied to a flat disk on the impact force during water entry
and found the decreasing impact force with the increasing
total volume of holes in the surface pattern. Besides, Marrone
et al. (2017) studied corrugated plates used in LNG carriers.
The plate has similar shape to the box-like structure.
It may be necessary to study the impact problem of the
box-like structure since previous studies have shown some
structural failures related to water impacts. Cuomo et al.
Foundation item: This work is financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2019YFC1407700).
*Corresponding author. E-mail: sunzc@dlut.edu.cn
bridges during extreme storm events. They studied the wave-
loading on the structure and analyzed the effect of the
trapped air. Ge et al. (2020) reported the cracking phe-
nomenon of a perforated caisson berth during construction
caused by wave impacts. According to the spatial distribution
of the creaking, the authors believed that the phenomenon
was caused by wave impacts. Besides, several researchers
have presented some characteristics of the problem. Sun et
al. (2019) and Wang et al. (2022) studied the wave impact
on the perforated caisson. They found that the air entrapment
was significant. The trapped air could induce an upward
pressure inside the opening above the still water level close
or even greater than the pressure on the perforated wall.
However, most of the works focused on the impact force.
The slamming phenomena was less studied. Besides, most
studies focused on rigid cases, while considering structural
elasticity may be necessary. In their studies of corrugated
plates, Marrone et al. (2017) and Brosset et al. (2011) found
that the structures could deform during violent impact
events. Tang et al. (2020) studied water impacts on an elastic
perforated caisson model by the coupled SPH-FEM method.
They analyzed the distribution of dynamic stress that was
334 YANG Jian et al. China Ocean Eng., 2023, Vol. 37, No. 2, P. 333–342
Fig. 1. Examples of the box-like structures in engineering. (a) Perforated
caissons; (b) coastal bridge model with girders.
less studied in previous analytical solutions. In addition, it is
interesting to use surface-patterned structures for impact
force reduction. However, Kim et al. (2021) only studied
rigid cases. The patterns may deform significantly depending
on material properties and other factors. Studies including
structural elasticity may help improve the understanding of
the problem.
The objective of this paper was to study the impact
problem of the box-like structure. Special attention was paid
to the influence of the structural response and air entrap-
ment. The numerical method based on ANSYS software
was used. Specifically, a compressible two-phase fluid
solver was used to evaluate the fluid, the finite element
method (FEM) was used for the structural deformation, and
the partitioned approach was used for the fluid−structure
interaction (FSI). The paper aims to gain some insights into
the water impact mechanism, and special attention was paid
to the influence of the structural response and air entrap-
ment.
The paper is structured as follows: Section 1 briefly
introduces the problem background. Section 2 presents the
numerical methods, and Section 3 validates the method.
Section 4 analyzes the results of the different cases. Finally,
Section 5 draws the main conclusions.
2 Numerical method
2.1 Fluid solver
The water impact problem can be treated as a two-phase
fluid problem. Specifically, the SST k−ω turbulence model
(Menter, 1994) was used to solve the fluid, and the volume
of fluid (VOF) model (Hirt and Nichols, 1981) was used to
capture the free surface. Eqs. (1) and (2) show the continuity
and momentum equation.
[ )]
1 ∂( ) (
αq ρq + ∇ · αq ρq u = 0; (1)
ρq ∂t
[ (
∂( ) ( )
ρu +∇ · ρuu = −∇p + ∇ · μ ∇u + ∇uT −
∂t
)] ( )
2 ′ ′
∇ · uI + ∇ · −ρu u . (2)
3 used. Still, the sub-solvers should satisfy the consistency of
In the above equations, αq (0≤αq ≤1) is the volume
fraction of the q-th phase (q =1, 2). The volume fractions
∑
2
satisfy the condition: αq = 1.
1
The ideal gas law Eq. (3) was used for air compressibil-
ity, and the energy equation was used to calculate the quan-
tities needed in the model,
p
ρ= , (3)
R
T
Mw
where R is the universal gas constant, and Mw represents the
molecular weight of the gas. In addition, the water was
treated as the compressible liquid using the Tait equation.
The treatment could also help in reducing unphysical pressure
spikes that appear in dynamic mesh applications.
The SST k − ω model solves the turbulence kinetic
energy, k, and the specific dissipation rate, ω. Then the
Reynolds stresses can be evaluated based on the values. The
governing equations of k and ω are given as follows. More
details about the model can be found in Menter (1994) and
the theory manual of the code (ANSYS, 2019).
∂( ) ( )
ρk + ∇ · ρku = ∇ · (Γk ∇k) + Gk − Yk + S k ; (4)
∂t
∂( ) ( )
ρω + ∇ · ρωu = ∇ · (Γω ∇ω) + Gω − Yω + Dω + S ω . (5)
∂t
Besides, the dynamic mesh model was used to deal with
the deformable boundaries induced by the structural defor-
mation. The diffusion equation was solved for the mesh dis-
placement velocity (um):
( )
∇ · γ∇um = 0. (6)
Then, the fluid mesh was updated:
xnew = xold + um · ∆t, (7)
where xnew and xold represent the new and the old node
positions, respectively.
2.2 Solid solver
The solid solver solves the structural displacement by
the finite element method (FEM), and the discrete form of
the kinematic equation is as follows:
Ms̈ + Cṡ + Ks = F (t) , (8)
where M is the mass matrix; K is the stiffness matrix; C is
the damp matrix and F (t) is the external load. s, ṡ, and s̈ are
structural displacement, velocity, and acceleration at nodes
respectively.
2.3 Partitioned method for the FSI problem
The water impact of the elastic structure was a typical
fluid−structure interaction (FSI) problem. A two-way parti-
tioned method, based on the software, was used to solve it.
The partitioned approach uses different solvers to solve each
sub-physical field, and different numerical methods can be
 YANG Jian et al. China Ocean Eng., 2023, Vol. 37, No. 2, P. 333–342
the results on the shared boundaries in each time step. For
the FSI problem, the fluid velocity (uinterface ) should be the
same as the solid velocity ( ṡinterface): uinterface = ṡinterface . At
the same time, the interface forces acting on the fluid and
the solid should be equal in magnitude and opposite in
direction (Young et al., 2012). The calculation procedure of
the present problem can be described as follows: Before the
simulation, one should establish the sub-models and the
connections between the solvers, which include the model
settings in each sub-solver, the interface for data transfers,
and data mappings. The mapping process is needed because
the solvers usually use different meshes.
Then during the calculation, the iteration between the
solvers will continue until the quantities reach equilibrium
on the interface besides the calculation in each sub-solver,
and then a new time step begins. Specifically, Fig. 2 may
represent a typical iteration process between the fluid and
the structure solvers for the present problem.
Fig. 2. A schematic of the iteration process between the solvers for the
present problem.
3 Validation
The numerical method was validated from various
aspects, which include the two-way partitioned method, the
compressible two-phase flow model for water impacts, and
the convergence analysis. Firstly, we validated the two-way
partitioned approach for the fluid−structure interaction. The
drop test of an elastic flat plate (Faltinsen et al., 1997) was
simulated, and the numerical results can agree with the
experimental data (Faltinsen et al., 1997; Aghaei et al.,
2020). More details can be found in our previous work
(Yang et al., 2022).
3.1 Compressible two-phase flow model for water impacts
The drop test of a rigid flat plate (Tödter et al., 2020)
was used to verify the compressible two-phase model. A
focus was to validate whether the model can reveal air
entrapment.
In the simulation, the water tank is 2.1 m×1.0 m and the
water depth is 0.65 m. The plate model is 0.3 m wide and
0.012 m high and has a mass of almost 100 kg/m. Since the
boundaries were far from the plate model, they had little
influence on the impact force on the structure. Initially, the
plate model was dropped freely. When the model arrived the
335
water surface, the velocity was about 1 m/s. A measuring
point (P1) was set at the bottom of the plate to record the
time history of the pressure. The point was 0.185 m away
from the left end of the plate. By the way, the overset mesh
approach was adopted in this validation.
Fig. 3 shows the free surface profiles in the simulation.
One can observe a thin layer of air trapped between the
plate bottom and the water surface. As the impact continued,
the air layer broke into small parts and gradually disap-
peared. The phenomenon can reveal air entrapment and
agree with the rigid case of Tödter et al. (2020). Fig. 4
shows the time history of pressure at P1 obtained from the
present simulation and the experiment. The agreement is
good, especially in the initial time. Then the difference
slightly increases. A possible reason is that the present
model cannot capture the tiny air bubbles properly. Despite
this, the numerical model could capture the main effect of
air entrapment. However, more accurate models are necessary
if future studies aim to resolve air bubbles.
Fig. 3. Free surface profiles from the numerical simulation. It can be seen
that air was trapped underneath the plate bottom. The phenomenon agrees
with the snapshots of the rigid case (Tödter et al., 2020).
Fig. 4. Time histories of pressure at the measuring point P1. (Num: The
present numerical result; Exp-P1: Experimental result of Tödter et al.
(2020)).
3.2 Convergence analysis of the box-like structure
Then the water impact of the box-like structure was
336 YANG Jian et al. China Ocean Eng., 2023, Vol. 37, No. 2, P. 333–342

studied. However, the temporal and spatial sensitivity were

examined before the final results. The results of the conver-
gence analysis are given in this section.
Initially, the fluid domain was full of air. After the simu-
lation began, the water flowed in from the bottom boundary
of the domain at a constant velocity (v = 4 m/s) and
impacted the structure. The domain is 5 m wide and 3 m
high. The dimensions are large enough so that the boundary
conditions have little influence on the numerical result. The
structure has uniform walls of 0.312 m long and 0.005 m
thick. Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 show the details of the models in
Section 4.1. Four different meshes and three different time
steps were examined in the analysis, and the cases are given
Fig. 6. A schematic of the box-like structure. In the elastic case, the green
in Table 1. It is noted that the mesh size in the table refers to
parts are deformable, while the gray part is not. Besides, Point A is used to
the minimum size around the structure. The SST k−ω turbu-
measure the structural deflection.
lence model was used in the validation. The turbulence
model combines the advantages of the original k−ω model Table 1 Examined meshes and time step sizes
Case Mesh size (mm) Time step size (ms)
1 7.5 0.1
2 5.0 0.1
3 3.5 0.1
4 2.5 0.1
5 2.5 0.125
6 2.5 0.15

Fig. 5. A schematic of the rigid/elastic water impact problem (In the fig-
ure, L1= 1.844 m, L2 = 0.312 m, H = 3 m, and W = 5 m). The dashed line
shows the deformable parts in the elastic cases. In the x direction, the structure
is located in the center of the computational domain.
and the k−ω model and has been applied to different impact
problems (Xiang et al., 2020; Jiang et al., 2021; Wang et al.,
2022).
Fig. 7 shows the free profiles during the water impact
obtained with different meshes. Specifically, Figs. 7(a1) and
5(a2) show the free surfaces when the impact load nearly
met the maximum value. Figs. 7(b1) and 7(b2) show the
results during the pressure dropping time when the trapped
air was escaping outwards. It can be seen that a refined

Fig. 7. Local free profiles at specific moments obtained with different meshes and time step sizes. Specifically, (a1) and (a2) show the free surfaces at t =
0. 49 s; (b1) and (b2) show the free surfaces at t = 0.52 s. It is noted that (a2) and (b2) show the local views inside the red boxes of (a1) and (b1).
 YANG Jian et al. China Ocean Eng., 2023, Vol. 37, No. 2, P. 333–342 337

mesh can give a more detailed description of the air−water Table 2 Positions of the pressure measuring points
interface, such as the small air bubbles against the walls Monitoring points Position
Point 1 x=2.50 m; y=2.151 m
(Figs. 7(a1) and 7(a2)). Besides, the free surfaces with same
Point 2 x=2.35 m; y=2.151 m
mesh sizes and different time step sizes had negligible dif- Point 3 x =2.65 m; y=2.151 m
ference. Point 4 x =2.35 m; y =2.0 m
Fig. 8 shows the time histories of the vertical force on Point 5 x =2.65 m; y =2.0 m
the structure. In general, different cases show similar results, Point 6 x =2.35 m; y =1.844 m
and mesh sizes have more significant influence than time Point 7 x =2.65 m; y =1.844 m
step sizes. As the water impact continues, the impact load
rises and drops. In the rising phase, the curves are similar. providing convenience for the comparison. Finally, consid-
However, as the impact forces meet the peak value and drop, ering the computational efficiency and the accuracy, the
the difference between the results becomes apparent. The mesh size of 2.5 mm and the time step of 0.1 ms were used
in the following simulations.
difference may be due to the fact that coarse meshes cannot
capture the air-water interface properly. With mesh refine- 4 Results and analysis
ment, the model may generate a more precise result. More- This section first gives brief introductions to the model
over, the results obtained with different time steps are close. settings. Then the results of the different cases are given. In
There is only a small difference at the end of the simulation this work, the vertical impacts refer to the cases where the
when the pressure drops, which has a negligible influence structural symmetry axis is vertical to the water, and the
during the simulation time. The difference may be related to oblique impacts refer to the cases where the axis is oblique
the local air−water interface. A smaller time step should to the water.
capture the water-air interface more properly. The same
conclusion can be drawn from Fig. 9, which shows the time 4.1 Model settings of the rigid/elastic cases
histories of pressure at Point 1 (The point is given in Fig. 6 The dimensions of the fluid domain are given in Fig. 5.
and Table 2). The point was chosen because it was mainly The impact velocities were v = 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 m/s in the
affected by air compression and expansion. Therefore, the simulations. Fig. 6 gives the sketch of the box-like structure.
pressure could avoid large variations in most impact events, It has the same width and height of 0.312 m. A measuring
point, Point A, was set to record the structural response.
Besides, seven measuring points were located on the inner
surface of the model to monitor the pressure signals. The
details are given in Table 2, too.
For the elastic structure, the fixed support was set on its
upper surface, while the other parts were deformable. The
model parameters of the elastic structure are summarized in
Table 3.

Table 3 Model parameters of the elastic structure

Parameter Value
Material Structural steel
Density 7850 kg/m3
Fig. 8. Time histories of the vertical force on the structure with different
meshes and time step sizes. Young’s modulus 2.1×1011 Pa
Poisson’s ratio 0.34
Boundary conditions The clamped support condition

4.2 Vertical water impact of the rigid structure

Fig. 9. Time histories of pressure at Point 1 with different meshes and
time step sizes.
Fig. 10 shows the relationship between the vertical force
and the normalized time. The trends of the curves are similar
at different impact velocities. As the velocity increases, the
loading time and the peak force also increase. The curves
are smooth, and no significant shock values were observed.
That may be because the trapped air reduced the impact
force. To explore the impact mechanisms, we analyzed the
local velocity fields and pressure distributions (Fig. 11).
From the pictures, the water impact process can be
338 YANG Jian et al. China Ocean Eng., 2023, Vol. 37, No. 2, P. 333–342
Fig. 10. The relationships between the vertical force (Fv) and Vt /L1,
obtained from the simulations of the rigid structure. The impact velocities
are v = 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 m/s.
described as follows. With the water surface rising and con-
tacting the structure, the air inside the structure was com-
pressed and the air pressure began to rise. When the pressure
was much higher than the pressure outside, the air expanded
and pushed the water outward Figs. 11(c2) and 11(d2). The
water surface deform much. At the same time, the deformation
made it easy for the trapped air to escape outwards, as the
velocity distributions shown in Figs. 11(c1) and 11(d1).
In addition, some characteristic phenomena can be seen.
After the initial contact moment, the water could still flow
along the sidewalls with no significant flow separation
Fig. 11. Velocity fields and the pressure distributions (v = 4 m/s). (a1)−(d1) (or (a2)−(d2)) show the results at t = 0.48, 0.50, 0.51, and 0.52 s. It is noted
that the black line represents the free surface.
Fig. 12. Water profiles at different moments (t = 0.46, 0.48, 0.50, 0.52,
and 0.54 s) obtained by the CFD method without air compressibility.
occurred, but some large air bubbles formed attached to the
walls as can be seen from Figs. 11(c1) and 11(c2). This phe-
nomenon was different from that of the simulation without
air compressibility (Fig. 12), where the flow separation
appeared and no air bubble formed.
To further explore the differences between the com-
pressible and incompressible cases, the results of impact
force are given (Fig. 13). It can be seen that the curves are
different. The peak value in the latter case was much larger,
and the loading time was shorter.
One may be interested in the high-frequency oscillations
in the incompressible case. To analyze the reasons, we show
the local velocity fields when most oscillations with large
amplitudes occurred (Fig. 14). By the way, the time
moments of the pictures are consistent with the marks in the
local view of Fig. 13. As the water level approached to the
structure (Fig. 14a), the air above the water surface also
moved together. Part of the air would enter the structure,
and some air inside was pushed outwards. The maximum
velocity occurred near the two sidewalls, and both sides had
almost the same magnitude. As the water level kept rising,
some air was trapped between the structure and the water
surface, and the impact pressure also met the peak value.
However, the high air pressure inside the structure pushed
the air outwards hard until the air was out. After that, the air
Fig. 13. Time histories of the vertical force in the rigid cases with/without
air compressibility. The impact velocity is v = 4 m/s. (co-rigid-4 m/s: the
compressible case; ico-rigid-4 m/s: the incompressible case). The detail
view in the top right corner shows the result at t = 0.46−0.47 s.
 YANG Jian et al. China Ocean Eng., 2023, Vol. 37, No. 2, P. 333–342 339

Fig. 14. Local velocity field around the structure obtained from the incompressible case. Specifically, the black line represents the free surface, the vector
length is uniformed, and the contour shows the velocity magnitude. (a)−(h), t = 0.462, 0.463, 0.464, 0.465, 0.466, 0.467, 0.468, 0.469 s.

pressure dropped sharply. The asymmetric distribution of at Point A. Compared with the rigid cases in Section 4.2,
the velocity field (Fig. 14b) could suggest the air entrapment there are significant fluctuations on these curves, suggesting
and the push by high pressure. With the water kept rising, the influence of structural elasticity.
the air would be trapped and induce a new impact again Fig. 18 shows a synchronization analysis of the force
(Figs. 14c−14h). However, with the trapped air decreasing, and the structural displacement. The impact process can be
it became more difficult for the air to escape. Finally, the divided into two phases by the moment “a” (dashed line in
amount of air became constant, and the oscillation settled the figure). Before this time, the impact force and the struc-
down. tural deformation increased simultaneously. After this time,
Fig. 15 compares the maximum pressure at the measuring
points in the two cases. In the compressible cases, the points
close to the structure opening had smaller values than the
other points, and the maximum relative difference can be up
to 50%, occurring at v=10 m/s, while in the incompressible
case, the monitoring points had similar values. The incom-
pressible case had much higher pressures than the com-
pressible cases.

Fig. 16. Relationships between the impact force (Fv) and Vt /L1, obtained
from the elastic cases. Impact velocity v = 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 m/s.

Fig. 15. The maximum pressures at different impact velocities. (Co-rig-:

Compressible cases, Ico-rig-: Incompressible case).

4.3 Vertical water impact of the elastic structure

In this section, the results of elastic cases are given. We
discussed the differences between the rigid and elastic cases. Fig. 17. Relationships between the structural deformation (in y-axis, Point
Fig. 16 shows the vertical force (v = 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 m/s), A) and Vt /L1, obtained from the elastic cases. The impact velocity v = 2, 4,
and Fig. 17 shows the results of the structural displacement 6, 8, and 10 m/s.
340 YANG Jian et al. China Ocean Eng., 2023, Vol. 37, No. 2, P. 333–342
Fig. 18. A comparative analysis of the impact force and the structural
response, obtained from the elastic case (v = 4 m/s).
the force increase was accompanied by the deformation
decrease. To explore the phenomenon, the velocity fields
and the pressure distributions of the elastic case are given
(Fig. 19). From the results, one can observe that the trapped
air was compressed and pushed the structure hard before t =
a. Therefore, the structural deformation and the impact force
increased. After the time, the air expanded and the pressure
inside decreased, causing a decrease in the structural defor-
mation. However, the structure deformation decreased so
Fig. 19. Water profiles, velocity fields, and the pressure distributions in the elastic case (v = 4 m/s) at t = 0.48, 0.50, 0.51, and 0.52 s. It is noted that the
black line represents the free surface.
Fig. 20. The maximum pressures in the elastic cases (v = 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10
m/s; Co-elas-: Elastic cases with air compressibility).
quickly that the gas could be slightly compressed. As a
result, the force became a little bigger (t = d−e, e−f in
Fig. 18). Finally, the interaction induced the oscillations.
Another interesting phenomenon is the air escaping during
the air compression phase (Fig. 19(b1)), which was insignif-
icant in rigid cases. The reason may be that the water separated
from the wall surface as the structural deformation increased
during the phase, and the trapped air could escape outwards
easily.
Fig. 20 shows the maximum pressures at the monitoring
points. The results seemed chaotic near the opening, espe-
cially at high impact velocities, probably due to the violent
air−water interaction near the structure opening.
Moreover, the Fast Fourier analysis (FFT) was used to
explore the vibration characteristics of the structure. Fig. 21
gives the FFT spectrums of the structural displacement of
Point A. One can observe that the structure vibrated at a
peak frequency much lower than the eigenfrequencies
(Table 4). That may be because the trapped air pushed hard
against the structure, preventing it from deforming.
4.4 Oblique water impact of the structure
In this section, we studied the oblique water impact of
the box-like structure. Structural elasticity was included in
the simulation. Fig. 22 gives the model settings. The impact
velocity was v = 4 m/s, and the angle is θ =15° between the
Fig. 21. FFT spectrums of the structural deformation (in the y-axis),
obtained from the elastic cases with different velocities.
 YANG Jian et al. China Ocean Eng., 2023, Vol. 37, No. 2, P. 333–342 341

Table 4 Eigenfrequencies of the structure

Mode 1 2 3
Dry (Hz) 44.655 279.520 781.120

Fig. 24. Time histories of pressure at the monitoring points (Points 1−7).

Point 5 had similar values. However, Point 6 and Point 7

Fig. 22. A schematic of the model for the oblique water impact problem.
A local coordinate system x′oy′ is defined on the structure, where the global
coordinates of the origin are xo′ = 2.5; y′o = 2.0 . The angle between the y-
axis and y′- axis is θ =15° . H = 3 m, and W = 5 m.
structure and the water surface normal. Besides, the
clamped support was set on the upper boundary of the struc-
ture.
Fig. 23 compares the time histories of the impact force
in the vertical and the oblique elastic cases. For comparison,
the curve of the former case was positioned with the same
phase as the latter case. It can be seen that the two curves
are similar in the force rising time (between (a) and (b)).
However, as the impact force decreased, a difference
occurred, and the force in the oblique case falls slower
(between (b) and (c)). After t = (c), the impact force
increased again in the oblique case while the force still fell
in the vertical case. It seemed that the oblique impact had a
small influence initially but affected more in the later phase.
However, it should be noted that the results may depend on
the angle θ . As the angle increases, the curves may differ
more.
had smaller peaks. The reason may be that the point had
good air ventilation and was less affected by the air com-
pression.
Fig. 25 shows the water profiles in the oblique case. The
results showed obvious asymmetry. One can observe that
the water flow rose along the left sidewall and formed large
bubbles, whereas on the right sidewall, significant flow sep-
aration occurred (Fig. 25, t = 0.04−0.1 s), similar to the
incompressible case. Air escaping was significant, but the
phenomenon occurred only along the left wall. Moreover,
the asymmetry affected the structural response. Fig. 26
shows the time histories of the displacement (in the x′-axis)
at Points A and B, where the positive value represents the
deformation along the positive direction of the x′-axis.
According to the figure, the two points met their maximum
and minimum values at different moments. Point A, which
is initially far from the still water surface, shows a large
deflection, while Point B, close to the water surface, shows
a small peak value. Combined with Fig. 25, air escaping
near Point B probably reduce the pressure, further causing
the deformation reduction.
5 Conclusions
This paper studied the water impact of the box-like
structures by using the numerical approach. Both rigid and

Fig. 23. Time histories of the impact force in the vertical case (along the y-
axis) and the oblique case (along the y′-axis).

Fig. 24 shows the pressure at the monitoring points. By

the way, the point locations on the structure were the same Fig. 25. Water profiles in the oblique case. (a)−(f): t = 0.02, 0.04, 0.05,
as those in the vertical case. From the figures, Point 1 to 0.06, 0.07, 0.10 s.
342 YANG Jian et al. China Ocean Eng., 2023, Vol. 37, No. 2, P. 333–342
Fig. 26. Time histories of the structural displacement at Points A and B.
The positive value represents the deformation along the positive direction
of the x′-axis.
elastic structures were studied.
For the rigid cases, we made a comparative analysis of
the simulations with/without air compressibility. The results
differ much. In the compressible case, the water could rise
along the sidewalls, while in the incompressible case, flow
separation occurred immediately after the initial impact
moment. Besides, the former case showed smooth pressure
curves, but shock pressures occurred in the latter case, much
higher than those in the former case.
For the elastic cases, the structural deformation could
cause the escaping of air, weakening the air cushioning
effect. Therefore, the peak pressure could become higher
than those in the rigid cases. During the pressure-dropping
phase, the rapid recovery of the structural deflection could
compress the trapped air and extend the loading time. As the
impact velocity increased, the phenomena also became sig-
nificant. The FFT analysis showed that the structure
vibrated at frequencies much lower than its eigenfrequen-
cies, suggesting that the air cushion prevented the structural
vibration during the impact process.
For the oblique case, asymmetry of the slamming phe-
nomena was observed. Both air bubbles and flow separation
appeared in the simulation, and the left and right sidewalls
of the structure had different deformations. The vertical and
oblique impacts had similar peak forces, but the curves had
different trends over time. Besides, the angle θ may affect
the impact force, and further analysis may be necessary to
study the influence.
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
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