Systematic analysis of mesh and meshless CFD numerical methods for water impact problems

Two types of numerical simulations for the hydrodynamic solution of water entry problems are performed and systematically compared in order to highlight their peculiarities: a viscous Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) based on Volume of Fluid (VoF) approach and a meshless Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) solver. In both cases open-source software have been chosen. The numerical solutions from the two proposed CFD methods are veried against experimental measurements. The systematic analysis is performed considering a prescribed motion of the wedge aiming to a better understanding of the effect of the model set-up on the prediction of both local and global eld variables. Even if a bothcodes shows a high ability to capture the global physics of the problem, due to the strongly non-linear dynamic of the body- ow interactions involved in impact problems, the local pressure peaks can be hardly predicted if the numerical method is not suitably tuned for the specific problem. Finally the two approaches are performed also for a free falling simulation, comparing the numerical predictions to the available experimental drop tests results.