Pressure reconstruction during water impact through particle image velocimetry: Methodology overview and applications to lightweight structures.

As composite structures are increasingly integrated in marine vessels, the need for a thorough, physically based understanding of fluid-structure interactions during hull slamming becomes a compelling issue. During sea keeping and maneuvering, hull slamming is responsible for highly impulsive loading conditions, which may result into undesired vibrations, fatigue, and, potentially, failure. Despite significant progress in experimental mechanics, detailed measurements of the spatio-temporal evolution of the hydrodynamic loading during hull slamming are not currently available. Here, we summarize recent progress by our group on the use of particle image velocimetry toward an improved understanding of hull slamming. Our research puts forward a purely data-driven methodology to reconstruct the pressure field generated during hull slamming from the direct measurement of the velocity field in the fluid flow. Beside methodological aspects of our work, we detail the implementation of the approach to address few exemplary open problems in hull slamming research.