Numerical modeling of the impact on water of a flexible structure by explicit finite element method - Comparisons with Radioss numerical results and experiments

The current development of crash calculation codes associated with the sign ificant improvement in the performance of data processing facilities allow us to consider, in an industrial framework and under interesting economical conditions, numerical simulations of the impact on water of a deformable s tructure. A transient fast dynamic finite element method has been chosen fo r its potential to model the nonlinearities of the structure, geometrical, material or contact nonlinearities. It is evaluated here for various test c ases for which the analytical and numerical results are available. The corr elations between calculations and reference results, and their costs, allow such an approach to be validated subject to a definitive validation on a r epresentative structure. (C) Elsevier, Paris.