Comparison of Potential and Viscous Codes for Water Entry Problem

Comparison of Potential and Viscous Codes for Water Entry Problem

This paper presents a comparison of potential and viscous computational codes for the water entry problem. A po-tential code was developed which adopted the boundary element method to solve the problem. A nonlinear free surface boundary condition was integrated to find new locations of free surface. The dynamic boundary condition was simplified by taking constant potential values for every time steps. The simplified dynamic boundary condition was applied in the new position of the free surface not at the mean level, which is the usual practice for linearized theory. The commercial code FLUENT was used to solve the water entry problem from the viscosity point of view. The movement of the air-liquid interface is traced by distribution of the volume fraction of water in a computational cell. The pressure coefficients were compared with each other, while experimental results published by other researchers were also examined. The characteristics of each method were discussed to clarify merits and limitations when they were applied to the water entry problems.