High-speed ditching of a flat plate: Experimental data and uncertainty assessment

The water entry of a flat plate with a high horizontal velocity component is investigated experimentally. The objective is to achieve a better understanding of the physical phenomena occurring during aircraft ditching. The study is a part of the SMAES-FP7 project, which was aimed at developing simulation tools for aircraft design and certification. The experimental data are used to support their validation. In order to perform the tests, which are done at realistic ditching speeds, a new facility has been designed and built at CNR-INSEAN. The use of quasi-full scale velocity allows to overcome the troubles of scaling the structural behavior in such a complicated fluid-structure interaction problem. In this paper two test conditions are considered for which several repeats were performed allowing to assess the uncertainty of the data. Results are presented in terms of pressures, strains and loads and an interpretation of the measured data on the basis of theoretical solutions of the problem is provided.