Analysis of Deformation in an Aluminium Hull Impacting Water Free Surface

Abstract

Water impacts provide a challenge for a wide range of applications, from aerospace, to marine, mechanical and civil engineering, due to the complexity conveyed by the coexistence of impulsive loads, large local deformations and high-amplitude vibrations. Thus, the need for reliable structural health monitoring (SHM) systems is emerging in the industrial field of fluid-structure interaction (FSI) applications. In this paper, we leverage the previous work on strain and displacement fields reconstruction to analyse a scale aluminium model subject to water vertical and oblique impacts. Fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensors were installed on the hull ribs and used both as reconstruction sensors (to reconstruct the structure mechanical behaviour characteristics) and as control sensors, by using their signals to compare the real and reconstructed structural parameters, at the sensors locations. Finally, the effectiveness of different reconstruction layouts was investigated referring to the strain signal reconstruction quality in case of both vertical and oblique impacts. Results show the potential of the described method for the reconstruction of strain signal through a proper choice of the reconstruction sensors positions both in case of vertical and oblique impacts.